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THE MEANING 
OF PERSONAL LIFE 



THE MEANING 
OF PERSONAL LIFE 



BY 

NEWMAN SMYTH 



"Of all I see, in earth, and sky, — 

Star, flower, beast, bird, — what 

Part have I ? " 

— ^Whittiee. 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1916 



:B3]43 
.3 6 



COPYEIGHT, 1916, BV 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Published Maicb, 1916 




MAR 29 1916 



'CLA.428303 



TO 
MY WIFE 



WHO HELPED ME PUBLISH MY FIRST BOOK 

WHOSE LOVE HAS BEEN MY STEADFAST LIGHT THROUGH 

THESE SEARCHINGS FOR LIFE's MEANINGS 

I DEDICATE 

THIS FRUIT OF MY. LATER YEARS 



PREFACE 

Tms book is the result of studies of the meanings of 
nature and life, which the author has pursued since the 
publication in 1902 of his Lowell Lectures, Through 
Science to Faith. Since then the author has from time to 
time taken up anew the conclusions to which he had 
been led in that volume, and it has been his aim to re- 
view the reasonings of that earlier book as though it 
were the work of another. From more recent scientific 
researches and working-theories he has sought to know 
better what is the real meaning of the final and supreme 
fact in nature of the personal life. This is no easy task; 
for aU ways of investigation lead up toward this ulti- 
mate problem, yet no science by itself alone can tell the 
answer to the old question, What is your Hfe? The 
reasonable answer, which religious faith seeks, is ulti- 
mately to be found at the point where all the ways of 
knowledge meet. Though such inquiries must traverse 
many fields of the specialists and among confusing side- 
paths, nevertheless, the method of such pursuit of truth 
may be simple and straightforward. 

Many summer wanderings through the sohtudes of 
the woods of northern Maine may have unconsciously 
taught me the method which I have pursued through 
the following pages. As described more fully in the 
opening chapter, it is to look at first all around for any 
slightest indications of direction; and then, keeping 
preconceived ideas out of mind, to follow the trail from 
sign to sign. Accordingly I must begin in the first chap- 
ter by taking notice of some scientific teachings con- 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

cerning the first, least things that are known. Possibly 
the general reader may find some of these earlier pages 
too scientific to possess for him any personal interest; 
but they are of primary importance for our present 
purpose. For, in order to know ourselves, we must go 
back, as far as our knowledge possibly can, to the point 
where we, the latest born of the children of nature, be- 
gan first to be. Otherwise, if we do not observe intel- 
ligently whatever physical science or biology may dis- 
cover concerning the origins of things, in our haste to 
find the way of life we may only circle round and round, 
and never come out of the metaphysical woods. The 
subject-matter will become more famihar, and of more 
human interest, as in the succeeding chapters we shall 
be led through our own experience of life on and up to 
the fulfilment aHke of nature and of personahty in the 
Son of man. Only thus, when we shall have come to 
the close of this search from sign to sign to know the 
meaning of our Hfe here and now, may faith look up 
toward the unrevealed mystery of Ufe beyond, and ask 
of all the sciences whether such knowledge as we do 
have of our present kind of life is not enough to yield a 
reasonable hope that it shall be continued hereafter. 

For the sake of readers who may have Httle leisure 
or inclination for philosophical and scientific studies, 
but who desire to think of these things, I have avoided 
technical terms of the schools, so far as accuracy would 
permit; where more critical discussions or references 
seemed desirable, I have inserted paragraphs of that 
nature in smaller type. The chapter on the Fulfilment 
of Personal Life in Jesus Christ has been taken in part 
from my recent small book of four lectures on Construc- 
tive Natural Theology. 

It would be idle for one to assume in such inquiries 
an attitude of entire detachment from his own mental 



PREFACE ix 

heredity or preformed beliefs; but one may be resolved 
to accept unhesitatingly every ascertained fact, as well 
as to entertain any probable working- theory of modern 
science, whatever may seem to be its bearings upon his 
habits of thinking; he must do so, if he is to be a teacher 
of thinkers or a true prophet of rehgion among men. 
I may commend, therefore, to students of the meanings 
of the world and ourselves, both in the laboratories and 
in the schools especially of rehgion, the simple yet search- 
ing method, which I have desired to follow, irrespective 
of any mistakes into which I may have fallen by the 
way, in the hope that, as knowledge advances, they 
may be led to more open vision and assurance of the im- 
mortal meaning of the personal Ufe. 

New Haven, March i, 1916. 



CONTENTS 

CHAFFER PAGE 

I. The Earliest Signs of Meaning 3 

II. Beginnings of Mind in Nature 24 

III. Personal Dynamics 48 

IV. The Relation of Body and Mind . . . . 115 
V. Development of Personality 140 

VI. Personal Individuality 169 

VII. The Fulfilment of Personal Life in Jesus 

Christ 195 

VIII. The Creative Spirit of Christianity . . . 235 

IX. The Future Personal Life 253 

X. Personal Realism — Conclusion 330 

Index 359 



THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 



THE 
MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

CHAPTER I 

THE EARLIEST SIGNS OF MEANING 

Life brings to us daily questionings concerning the 
meanings of things; but the one question running through 
them all is: What do we mean to ourselves? The su- 
preme problem of the world for us is: What is the ulti- 
mate meaning of the personal Hfe? 

Modern science requires of philosophy a revision of 
our conception of personality. In the light of new 
knowledge of nature we are to seek anew to know our- 
selves. We are facts of nature amid other facts of 
nature, having our being in the one whole of existence, 
coming to ourselves in the relations of all the elements 
and influences that make the universe what it is. Our 
consciousness of being is set in the mould of nature, and 
modern science will have us interpret ourselves from the 
nature side. Such is the end to be pursued in the fol- 
lowing pages. Our quest is to seek what natural signs, 
if any, of an ultimate meaning and worth of personal 
Hfe may be discerned. 

The method to be followed is simple and easy to state, 
though difficult to pursue; it is to accept every scientif- 
ically ascertained fact, and to ask of each in succession: 
Toward what does it point? Not What, taken by itself, 
does it prove? but What, beyond itself, may it signify? 
We assume thus the modern scientific postulates of the 

3 



4 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

wholeness of the existing universe, its continuities of rela- 
tions, its conservations of matter and energy. We are not 
to attempt to force any observed fact to fit any precon- 
ceived idea; we are to inquire what it is and may mean 
in its relation to what immediately precedes or follows it. 
We may thus reach finally a position where we may per- 
ceive whether aU the facts within the compass of our 
present knowledge indicate any definite direction toward 
any end; whether, taken all together, they have any 
meaning or worth which we may reasonably receive and 
trust. As we are careful at every step of the way not to 
force the facts of nature and life into any preformed con- 
ceptions of ourselves, we may bring to some assured con- 
clusion the search for the final value of our own full 
consciousness of personal being. 

Where, then, in such endeavor to know ourselves as per- 
sonal facts of nature are we to begin? Mr. C. Lloyd 
Morgan, in his latest book. Instinct and Experience, com- 
mences his investigation at that exact point in evolution 
where the chick of the moor-hen makes its first peck at 
its shell. He starts there, he tells us, because he must 
start from somewhere. It is not his object, as a scientific 
observer, to enter into any question concerning the source 
of things, but to investigate how animal nature, as it is 
constituted, acts, and what are the laws of its constitution 
in accordance with which an organism behaves. But if 
we would know what it really is, our inquiry cannot strike 
into the course of evolution at any arbitrarily fixed point. 
To apprehend ourselves in our origins or our possible 
destiny, we must go back through all that is known to 
have been before us — before historic man, before the cave- 
dwellers, before the entire organic order and development 
— back to the molecules, the electrons, those least suppos- 
able particles of matter with their electric charge; back 
through the whole process and continuity of evolution as 
far as science in its most venturesome research may pene- 



THE EARLIEST SIGNS OF MEANING 5 

trate toward the "source." There, where all knowledge 
ends and science just begins, we are to put our first point 
of personal interrogation : What sign of anything beyond 
itself does the first elementary form of existence bear? 

Such inquiry concerning the emergence and meaning 
of our own selfhood will compel us to traverse fields of 
scientific research which no one mind is capable of know- 
ing as the speciaHst in each may do; yet it is not a too 
presumptuous task for one who is not a specialist to pur- 
sue a hmited but straightforward path of inquiry through 
these fields, which offer on every side opportunities for 
research so boundless. 

What we shall have to do, then, in this inquiry is to 
follow from fact to fact, from sign to sign, the order of 
nature and the way of life; not until we shall have done 
this shall we be in a position to judge whether, as a whole, 
the universe, so far as known, and ourselves in it and of 
it, have intelligible meaning. It will not be necessary in 
the pursuit of this end to detain the general reader with 
detailed scientific technicalities, which require an expert's 
familiarity to be understood. It should be required of 
us to start from observed facts, and all the way through 
to keep close to the facts of experience. Nor should any 
knowledge be passed by which may seem to run counter 
to the course which other facts may seem to indicate. 
If we begin with a minimum of postulates we may hope 
for a maximum of rational assurance in our conclusion. 
Our starting-point, then, must be as far back as physical 
science may enable us to go. The nearer we can ap- 
proach the point where matter first appears, the better 
it will be for our apprehension of how eventually we came 
to be. The further we may peer into the ethereal depths 
of the creation's origins, the deeper also, beyond the things 
that appear, we may possibly penetrate into the mystery 
of our being and destiny. Anything that modern science 
may assure us to be true of the first motions and elements 



6 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

from which have proceeded the things that are visible, 
may have some significance for our interpretation of the 
whole subsequent direction and end of evolution. 

Recently physical science has pushed the limit of knowl- 
edge beyond the atom, which hitherto has been supposed 
to mark the last boundary of the world of matter, with 
nothing but cosmic ether beyond. Now between the ether 
of space and the atom another definite point of material 
form has been discovered, another fact further out on 
which science may find footing before knowledge stands 
facing the vast, formless unknown. The traditional atom 
has been dissociated into constituent elements, and the 
new physics starts with so-called electrons — the least par- 
ticles of matter scientifically determined. Their existence 
is demonstrable; their trail can be traced and photo- 
graphed as lines of vapor precipitated by their passage 
through an ingeniously prepared tube; but, though we 
thus know that they are, it is difl&cult to conceive what 
they are. They are supposed to have mass; we are in- 
formed that the "existence of masses which are much 
smaller than that of the smallest of the atoms of known 
substances has been demonstrated in the surest possible 
manner and by purely physical methods."^ Ruther- 
ford estimates them at slow velocities as 1,700 times 
smaller than the atom of hydrogen.^ Yet it is not cer- 
tain how far this infinitesimal mass is more apparent than 
real. For, although it is measurable, it has been found 
to vary at different degrees of temperature, and hence it 
is inferred that in part at least it may be more apparent 

^Righi, A., Modern Theory of Physical Phenomena, p. 127. 

^ Radioactive Substances, p. 6i8. The limit of microscopic vision is about 
the one-hundred-thousandth of an inch. "A molecule of hydrogen, com- 
posed of two atoms, is about one two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-millionth 
part of an inch. About one thousand atoms are supposed to constitute a 
highly organized vital corpuscle. From i,ooo to 1,700 electrons are thought 
to compose an atom of hydrogen." — {Am. Journal of Psychology, April, 
1908, p. 156.) 



THE EARLIEST SIGNS OF MEANING 7 

than real. Thus substantiality, as we ordinarily con- 
ceive of it, seems to vanish from the first estate of matter. 
Assuming the existence of the cosmic ether, and knowing 
the existence of these electrons, natural philosophy is con- 
fronted with the problem of the construction of pondera- 
ble matter from these imponderables or semi-impondera- 
bles. These infinitesimals are the beginnings of the crea- 
tion. No science can tell by what travail of nature the 
first forms of matter were brought forth; yet by their 
unseen activities the worlds have been made. Here, 
then, with the appearance of these electrons out of a form- 
less unknown, begins the Hne of questioning which we 
are to foUow to the end. Now that the physicist has suc- 
ceeded in catching in his laboratory this primeval form 
of matter, our interest lies in putting to it the old ques- 
tion: What sign showest thou? For one thing, these 
primal invisibles show an active aptitude for combination; 
and fitness for combination characterizes further the atoms 
charged with their attractions. In this elemental fitness 
for combination a sign is given. It is a mark of some 
structural possibility. But a hint, indeed, the structure 
of the atom may be of something greater that shall follow 
because it is; yet evidently these electrons have come to 
do something — they are here that more may be. Herein 
there lies the potency of a forming finite order out of an 
infinite formlessness. 

A physicist introduces his exposition of the modern 
theory of physical phenomena with this significant re- 
mark: "The new theory may perhaps acquire not a little 
importance in the future even from the philosophic point 
of view, since it points out a new method of considering 
the structure of ponderable matter, and tends to bring 
back to a single origin all the phenomena of the physical 
world." ^ He observes, that is, an apparent tendency in 
the earliest appearance of matter — a sign of one source — 

* Righi, A., ibid., p. xiii. 



8 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

a suggestion, at least, of monism, although not by itself 
alone an evidence of monotheism. 

From such beginnings cosmic physics takes up the story 
of the making of the worlds. By means of mathematical 
symbols, from data obtained by instruments of precision, 
and with reasonable use of the scientific imagination it 
would write anew the genesis of the heavens and the 
earth. The spectroscope has taught the alphabet of the 
language of the skies. Some of its primitive constructive 
forms have been made out. The light from the stars 
brings some intelligible message; we know that they are 
formed of the same building materials of which the earth 
is made. It is now possible on a basis of scientific ob- 
servations and calculations to construct plausible the- 
ories of the forces, the processes, the laws which have 
made the starry heavens and our habitable earth what 
they have become.^ We need only glance, in passing, at 
this fascinating revelation of the way the worlds have 
been made. The science of inorganic evolution is as yet 
only in its infancy, and we are but beginning to discover 
how the elements were fashioned and the existing order 
of inorganic nature evolved. The distinctive character, 
which we notice, is the fitness for combination which from 
the elemental origins marks with increasing significance 
the development of material forms. The elements have 
acquired distinctive properties and valencies; they enter 
into further structural combinations; nature begins at 
once to weave them into varied and intricate patterns. 
Everything seems to have been brought into existence 
for further uses. We may question Clerk-Maxwell's oft- 
quoted sentence that the atoms have the characteristics 
of manufactured articles; but the earth in its final form- 
ing has the appearance of some vast assembling-room of 
well-fitted parts. At a certain time, in a definite position 

^ See Arrhenius, Kosmische Pkysik and The Worlds in Making; Lockyer, 
J. N., Inorganic Development as Studied by Spectrum Analysis. 



THE EARLIEST SIGNS OF MEANING 9 

in space, sustained by a balance of forces from interstellar 
space, our earth has acquired its determinate constitution 
and form, and then has shown itself to be possessed of a 
specific capacity for a further issue — its fertile fitness as 
the environment of Hfe. It has gained being and form 
for something beyond itself. It has become means for 
an end. We do not know, but very likely at other points 
in space and in other periods of cosmic time an inorganic 
environment for the organic may have come to pass; but, 
however that may be, this we know : on this earth at last 
primeval forces have been so combined, numberless in- 
fluences have been so harmonized, subtle attractions and 
radiant energies from the outlying infinitude so balanced 
and timed and caused to work together for good, that 
here living matter appears and a new order of being and 
realm of untold richness and promise has been established, 
the full fruition of which does not yet appear. Hence- 
forth, from sKghtest germ, so frail that the least unfitness, 
the sKghtest discord in all this wondrous concord were 
enough to destroy it, life begins its wondrous history. 
The mystery deepens, and at the same time its possible 
significance increases, the moment we cross the boundary 
between the inorganic and the organic world. In the 
early part of the last century the living cell was discovered 
to be the common basis of all organic structure. As the 
atoms were regarded as the fundamental building stones 
of the inorganic, so the protoplasmic cells were considered 
to be the units of the organic world. But the cells, like 
the atoms, have shown themselves to be composite sub- 
stances; and recent biology has discerned in the cells 
complex systems of chemical and physical properties and 
stresses. The simplest living particle that the micro- 
scope can bring to light contains a world within itself 
waiting for future science to conquer if it can. How this 
Hving particle ever originated on this earth no one knows. 
To some extent organic compounds may be produced in 



lo THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

the laboratories; the eggs of some lower organisms have 
been artificially activated, the process of their develop- 
ment started up and carried to a certain degree of normal 
growth. Some eager biologists deem it quite possible 
that some day science may succeed in transforming in- 
organic into living matter, and, indeed, that the evolution 
of non-Hving into living substance has happened more 
than once, and may be happening now;^ but, at present, 
this possibiUty is as the alchemist's dream, and far be- 
yond the achievement of our subtlest chemistry. It is 
not, indeed, a possibility to be denied ; and should science 
ever discern the secret of life's origin in the womb of na- 
ture, that would be only another advance in our endeavor 
to find out by searching the ultimate Source of the whole 
wonder of the creation. 

In the absence of knowledge several hypotheses of the 
origin of life have been ventured. One was the supposi- 
tion that some living particles may have been wafted from 
other worlds, and, when the earth was ready, found here 
fertile soil for their germination. This hypothesis met 
the seemingly fatal objection that no living germ could 
have withstood the heat which its descent through our 
atmosphere might have engendered. Recently, however, 
Arrhenius has lent more plausibility to this conjecture as 
the result of his mathematical calculations and subsidiary 
hypotheses concerning the radiant forces which are now 
supposed to play throughout ethereal space. He holds it 
to be possible that the earth may have passed through 
multitudes of germs scattered through space, and that 
some of these living particles may have fallen undestroyed 
upon it. Thus all our life may have been the gift to us 
of other worlds more advanced than ours. More gener- 
ally regarded as probable is the view that at some par- 
ticular stage of the earth's development it was fitted for 

' See Sir Edward A. Schafer's address as president of the British Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of Science, 1912. 



THE EARLIEST SIGNS OF MEANING ii 

the spontaneous birth of life. Just the right temperature 
and conditions of chemical elements may have occurred, 
perhaps once for all time in the earth's history, when, as 
at no other moment, the great transformation may have 
occurred. If so, a prophetic sign would have then been 
given of a greater world-age about to come. The philo- 
sophic monist and the theistic believer might well wish 
that science might find, indeed, the way which nature has 
taken in crossing the apparently impassable gap between 
the inorganic and the organic, over which we can throw 
only slender hypotheses. At present the philosopher be- 
holds the wonder of the whole world of life in a dot of 
living matter under the microscope, and he must ask: 
Whence and why its coming and its potency to make it 
a world for us? Did it from the beginning mean us? 

At this point, then, in the pursuit of our inquiry we 
observe that form and fitness for something to be achieved 
constitute the double mystery of the first known beginning 
of things. 

Note more critically what thus far has taken place; 
viz., the total resultant of one cycle of development, the 
inorganic, has become a fitness of things for another cycle 
of evolution, the organic. The one development has be- 
come environment for another. Somehow, somewhy, one 
order has so come to pass that another order may use it 
for its existence. This elemental sign of fitness for some- 
thing other than itself has become a plain mark on the 
face of things. Hence biology does not begin with the cell; 
it runs back into the antecedent problem of the adap- 
tation of the inorganic environment for the cell. Na- 
ture took ages in making the inorganic a womb for the 
birth of the organic. Whether or not this is fortuitous, 
whether or not this character of fitness is a mere by- 
product of mechanical forces, at this stage of our inquiry 
is obviously not to be determined; but this character it- 
self is a fact in evidence. It is an original hall-mark on 



12 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

the creation. The question at this point is not the sur- 
vival of the fittest, but "the arrival of the fit." 

Formerly this striking characteristic of nature, its con- 
stitutional adaptation to be the abode of life, was ad- 
vanced as a signal evidence of intelHgent design. The 
scientific knowledge of the day was used with much force 
in the famous series of Bridgewater Treatises to illustrate 
the "Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God as manifested 
in the Creation." Whewell reasoned that "a great num- 
ber of quantities and laws appear to have been selected in 
the construction of the universe; and that by the adjust- 
ments to each other of the magnitudes and laws thus, se- 
lected, the constitution of the world is what we find it, 
and is fitted for the support of vegetables and animals in 
a manner in which it could not have been if the proper- 
ties and quantities of the elements had been different from 
what they are." ^ But since Darwin this reasoning from 
construction directly to design and a Designer has been 
brought to a pause — not necessarily, indeed, to a full 
period; but a scientific parenthesis has been interposed 
between premise and conclusion. Before the significance 
which the Bridgewater Treatises attributed to these con- 
trivances of nature can be admitted it must be shown 
further that mechanistic principles are not of themselves 
sufficient to account for them. The question also is 
raised whether other fortuitous combinations of the ele- 
ments might not have proved available for organic ends. 
Since Darwinism has demonstrated some vast construc- 
tive power in the process of natural evolution, it is held 
that the presumption is changed from the side of an in- 
telligent Artificer of the universe to that of its self-forma- 
tive potentiality, at least if motion and matter be first 
assumed. Consequently, the point of view of the Bridge- 
water Treatises has been generally abandoned among sci- 

^ Astronomy and General Physics Considered with Reference to Natural 
Theology, 4th ed., pp. 141-143. 



THE EARLIEST SIGNS OF MEANING 13 

entific men, while this apparent character of the present 
fitness of environment to life has been taken for granted 
and neglected by biological writers. But, Hke all funda- 
mental questions, this inquiry may be put off for a season, 
only to return again. It comes back to the philosophy of 
biology to-day in a new form : Is the principle of survival 
of the fittest a factor operative in inorganic evolution? 
Is it a principle sufficient to account for what we now 
know much better than the writers of the Bridgewater 
Treatises knew in their day concerning the physical and 
chemical properties of matter, and the specific adapta- 
tion of a few of their complex combinations to the subse- 
quent evolution of living matter? Or on what mecha- 
nistic principle is this double fitness to be understood? 
Can a single factor or law be found, not merely to hold to- 
gether two parallel developments, but to connect one an- 
tecedent, preparatory course with a subsequent course 
for which the first has value? We have in the develop- 
ment of the inorganic world what has been called "de- 
layed utility"; the successive stages of inorganic evolu- 
tion bear the broad mark of prospective utility. The 
prepared physical and chemical fitness of the environment 
for the advent of fife on this earth is evident enough, and 
on any known mechanistic principles puzzling enough, to 
compel science to search more thoroughly for some com- 
mon principle sufficient for both kinds and periods of 
evolution. 

This problem has recently been taken up anew from a 
critical physico-chemical point of view by Professor L. J. 
Henderson, of Harvard, in a book bearing the suggestive 
title, The Fitness of the Environment. His method of at- 
tack upon the problem is new and illuminating. He sim- 
plifies the question and renders it more scientifically de- 
terminable by narrowing it to the three chief elementary 
conditions of matter as related to life, on the one hand, 
and three distinctive characters of life, on the other hand 



14 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

— carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, with carbon compounds; and 
complexity, regulation, metabolism of life. He asks: 
"How does it come about that each and all of these many 
unique properties should be favorable to the organic 
mechanism, should fit the universe for Hf e ? And for the 
answer to this question existing knowledge provides, I 
believe, no clew" (p. 278). "The two fitnesses are com- 
plementary; are they, then, single or dual in origin? The 
simple view would be to imagine one common impulse 
operating on all matter, inorganic and organic, through 
all stages of its evolution, in all its states and forms, and 
leading to worlds Hke our own through paths apparently 
purposeful and really not yet explained" (p. 299). He 
excludes mere contingency in his endeavor to find the 
formative principle of the fitness of the environment. 
"There is, in truth," he observes, "not one chance in 
countless milHons of millions that the many unique prop- 
erties of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and especially of 
their stable compounds, water and carbonic acid, which 
chiefly make up the atmosphere of a new planet, should 
simultaneously occur in three elements otherwise than 
through the operation of a natural law which somehow 
connects them together. There is no greater probability 
that these unique properties should be without due cause 
uniquely favorable to the organic mechanism. These are 
no mere accidents; an explanation is to seek. It must 
be admitted, however, that no explanation is at hand" 
(p. 276). Excluding ordinary teleology as "a dangerous 
doctrine in science," he says: "Nevertheless, biological 
science has not been able to escape the recognition of a 
natural formative tendency, which Darwin identified as 
the result of natural selection. And now it appears to 
be necessary to postulate a like tendency in the evolution 
of inorganic nature" (p. 280). "The perfect induction 
of physical science, based upon each and all of its count- 
less successes in every department of physics and chemis- 



THE EARLIEST SIGNS OF MEANING 15 

try, conclusively proves that the whole process of cosmic 
evolution from its earhest conceivable state to the pres- 
ent is pure mechanism" (p. 304). "On the other hand, 
it is conceivable that a tendency should work parallel 
with mechanism, without interfering with it," etc. (p. 
306). "Matter and energy have an original property, 
assuredly not by chance, which organizes the universe in 
space and time. . . . Given the universe, life, and the 
tendency" (i. e., teleological), "mechanism is inductively 
proved sufficient to account for all phenomena" (p. 308). 
Thus we are brought back to Lotze's maxim: "How 
universal is the extent and how little is the significance 
of mechanism in nature!" This "tendency" is a mark, 
which we thus hit at the very beginning of the trail, which 
we must seek to follow through nature. 

Descartes, who was both philosopher and physicist, 
sought to explain mechanically all physical phenomena, 
including the hfe of plants and animals; he denied the 
vital principle attributed to them by Aristotle. During 
the three centuries now nearly passed since his day the 
controversy has been repeatedly renewed. No sooner 
does the one view appear to triumph than the other in a 
new form returns to the field. The hypothesis of a special 
vital force is exploded; but Driesch brings back Aristotle's 
" entelechies " in full array into the field once more. In 
the hour of the apparent subjection of the entire known 
field of organic phenomena to mechanism, the new vitalism 
returns to the charge and asserts the dominion of some 
higher factor of organic evolution. On either side an 
array of names eminent in science and natural philosophy 
might be mentioned; at present the philosophy of nature 
is as a house divided against itself. Some issues, however, 
have been cleared up; and as a result of the prolonged 
discussion and research we may draw a twofold conclu- 
sion. On the one hand, vital phenomena, one after an- 
other, have been investigated on mechanical principles 



i6 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

and their mechanical actions and reactions with more or 
less probability determined. Some vital phenomena still 
elude mathematical exploitation; they are not calculable 
as yet in terms of physico-chemical quantities and mo- 
tions. But undeniably it is no small part of the great 
achievement of modern science that it has unravelled the 
intricacies of many vital processes, and demonstrated laws 
of mechanics in the order of the organic world. At the 
same time it must be admitted that some phases of living 
matter are still inexplicable on mechanical principles, al- 
though the failure to account for them may be attributed 
by mechanistic thinkers to the partialness of our knowl- 
edge. The origin of living from non-living matter re- 
mains as much as ever a secret hidden in the depths of 
long-past conditions. Some characters of Hfe appear to 
be distinctive vital responses; as, for instance, certain 
tropisms of unicellular organisms, notwithstanding Pro- 
fessor Loeb's inferences from his researches. Other phe- 
nomena of self-regeneration, of responsive organic actions 
to organic needs, varying with environmental conditions, 
as well as the capacity to learn by trial and error, and the 
rudiments of the growth of instinctive behavior present 
vital qualities that are not quantitatively measurable in 
terms merely of known mechanical relations. But on the 
whole it is to be admitted that living matter has been 
made subject to the same laws, and is a constituent part 
of the same order as the chemical elements and the molec- 
ular motions of which it is formed and amid which it hves. 
On the other hand, this very reduction of the organic 
realm to natural law and order has opened the way for 
the philosophical view that both inorganic and organic 
evolution are parts and moments of one comprehensive 
process, and are continuous in and through some universal 
principle or power. The success of our knowledge of the 
mechanics of nature is itself the failure of a purely mechan- 
ical interpretation of nature, for some reason in it and 



THE EARLIEST SIGNS OF MEANING 17 

for it would seem to be required; and at the end of dem- 
onstration of the extent of the mechanical, scientific re- 
search comes to a full pause before the unknowable. It 
cannot be affirmed that mechanism, however extensive 
throughout nature, is sufficient to account for itself, or 
explains ultimately either matter or life. We are left 
with what may be called the biological paradox: living 
matter is mechanically constituted; but mechanism is not 
all that is given in living matter. 

We have not to do with an abstract conception of life; it 
is the actuality of living matter that is immediately pre- 
sented in our experience of the world. At this stage of 
our inquiry our single and persistent question of meaning 
stands as an interrogation-point after each biologically de- 
termined phase and factor of organic development; and it 
is to be raised as a final question, pressing for answer, at 
the close of the whole evolution and achievement of life.^ 

Two general considerations must suffice at this pre- 
liminary period of our search for the meaning of nature. 

I. Supposing that the entire mechanism of organic 
structure and functioning should have been scientifically 
mastered, the greater rather than less would the resultant 
problem become: How is such functioning itself as an 
accomplished result in nature to be understood ? How is 
the existing relationship of the parts to the whole as well 
as the "sympathetic rapport," the actual co- working of 
the parts, to be regarded ? Whether or not these adapta- 
tions"; and mutual relations of things were designed for 
use, they certainly have use, and to good purpose; nature 
has become a realm of organic ends, however these cor- 
relations and utilities were attained. 

^ As the present writer in a previous volume has pursued this line of ques- 
tioning across the biological field, we pass with only a cursory glance over 
this preliminary part of our inquiry. See my Through Science to Faith. 
Additional facts have accumulated since that volume was written, but the 
main argument there pursued the author believes has not essentially been 
modified by subsequent advances in biological research. 



1 8 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

This question is only half put when defined as a prob- 
lem of statics, of parts, that is, simply considered as forms 
fitted to some common structure and end. It is a ques- 
tion not merely of the mechanism, but of its working; 
not simply of the lived, but of the living. It is nature in 
action, in the action of mutually serviceable parts, pro- 
ducing results of organic utiHty, conducive to ends worth 
reaching, and attaining as the final result individual life 
well worth living — it is with this larger and profounder 
problem of ultimate meanings that we have to do. Grant- 
ing that the scientific investigator should confine himself 
to the determination of the actual processes and facts of 
behavior without regard to their ends; admitting that 
for strictly scientific research Lord Bacon's saying must 
be regarded that final causes are Hke vestal virgins, 
who are dedicated to God but barren; nevertheless these 
fruitful results of nature have come to pass, these final 
utilities have come to the birth. These Hving functions 
work together for good; the ends that have been organ- 
ically reached constitute for us the significance of the 
world. 

2. Surveying broadly the facts that distinctively char- 
acterize Hving matter, we observe what appears to be 
a certain formative tendency in organic development. 
This appearance frequently impresses itself upon stu- 
dents of biology. The role of natural selection as an 
efficient formative agency is found to have its Hmits; 
it is indirectly rather than positively constructive of 
specific forms; it destroys that life may be fulfilled. 
Other factors are to be sought for in determinate evolu- 
tion, for, as a matter of fact, evolution has been deter- 
minate. It has followed lines of definite descent; by 
many means it has given specific forms to things. The 
Neo-Darwinian views do not, indeed, invalidate Dar- 
win's verification of the influence of natural selection; 
they supplement it while they confirm it. De Vries's 



THE EARLIEST SIGNS OF MEANING 19 

primroses show sudden mutations; this indicates that 
variations are not necessarily minute changes in an in- 
definite number of possible directions. The problem of 
determinate variation is essentially a dynamic problem; 
and a negative explanation is not sufficient for a posi- 
tive potency in nature. That keen scientific teacher, Du 
Bois-Reymond, cannot escape this impression; he says: 
"It is impossible to avoid assumptions of formative laws 
in some cases of healing."^ Similarly T. H. Morgan, 
as a result of his studies of regeneration among lower 
organisms, is led to recognize something more included 
in these processes than can be explained by known chem- 
ical or physical properties of matter, something that 
"appeared as though guided by intelligence." ^ Both 
sides, the mechanistic account and the neo-vitalistic, are 
fairly presented in J. S. Haldane's Mechanism, Life, and 
Personality. He holds that "the position of the vitalists 
is wholly unsatisfactory; but it does not follow from this 
that the mechanists are right; and those engaged in the 
observation of living organisms can hardly escape feel- 
ing an instinctive distrust of the mechanistic theory, in 
spite of the confidence with which it has been urged upon 
the world during the last fifty years. Somehow or other 
a living organism never seems to be a mechanism, how- 
ever often it may be called one. The closer the exami- 
nation, the more confirmed does this impression be- 
come," etc. (p. 31). 

We would not, however, jump from a biological stand- 
point to a metaphysical conclusion. We are not affirm- 
ing that a positive potency or tendency toward some end 
is biologically to be demonstrated; we are not now ask- 
ing what can be proved, but simply at this point what 
may possibly be indicated, or left for further evidence 
to be verified. Biological science at present has no com- 

^Reden, vol. I, p. 291. 

^Biological Lectures Wood's Holl, 1899, p. 205. 



20 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

plete and demonstrable theory of heredity. Some fac- 
tors in it have been brought to light, some laws probably 
determined. There is much to be learned as to a posi- 
tive or driving principle of evolution. We receive from 
genetic biology as yet only signs of direction or deter- 
minate tendencies in the ascent of life, the full mean- 
ing of which we must search further to find out, if we 
can. At this stage of our argument it is enough to say 
that all the indications, taken together, seem to point 
beyond the mechanical toward some higher principle to 
be revealed. 

Over against a too-easy contentment with the experi- 
mental mechanics of life, there is enough in the con- 
siderations which we have thus far adduced to justify 
the lifting up of the idealist's view as at least a possible 
perception of the reahty: "Look upon all these things 
descriptively, and you shall see nothing but matter mov- 
ing instant after instant, each instant containing in its full 
description the necessity of passing over into the next. 
Nowhere will there be, for descriptive science, any gen- 
uine novelty or any discontinuity admissible. But look 
at the whole appreciatively, historically, synthetically, 
as a musician listens to a symphony, as a spectator 
watches a drama. Now you shall seem to have seen, in 
phenomenal form, a story." ^ 

Physical science introduces the beginning of a story, 
which biology continues. 

Its following chapters we are to peruse in the devel- 
opment of personal life. To these we now turn. The 
opening chapters of the story of nature are to be inter- 
preted by the closing pages of its history. 

^ Royce, The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, p. 425. 



THE EARLIEST "SIGNS OF MEANING 21 



NOTE ON LOEB'S MECHANISTIC VIEW OF THE UNIVERSE 

Professor Loeb would have us hold nothing beyond a labora- 
tory apprehension of the world, ourselves included. Anything 
within the whole compass of human experience which cannot 
be quantitatively determined is for him so much "metaphysical 
romance." He disposes easily of the whole biological problem 
of the harmonious character of life. He writes: "We must, 
however, settle a question which offers itself not only to the 
layman but also to every biologist, namely: How shall we con- 
ceive that wonderful adaptation of each part to the whole, by 
which an organism becomes possible?" He regards the efforts 
of the authors of such terms as " deahng here, as in all cases 
of metaphysics, with a play on words." He settles the prob- 
lem summarily, and without any play on words, by the simple 
statement that the phenomena of "adaptation cause only 
apparent difficulties since we rarely or never become aware of 
the nmnerous faultily constructed organisms which appear in 
nature." That there may be a countless munber of such fail- 
ures of ill-adapted organisms, and only a few chance hits, he 
has no difficulty in rendering plausible by his experiments in 
the hybridization of marine bony fishes. There are, he says, 
10,000 such teleosts in existence, and all possible crosses would 
amount to 100,000,000. Embryos which he produced artffi- 
cially in a pure breed of bony fish were identical in every 
detail with embryos produced by crosses of the same fish; 
they had heart and lungs, but no circulation, and their lack 
of adaptation was simply for the reason that the chemical 
differences between the heterogeneous sperm and egg resulted 
in abnormal chemical processes. From all this it is easy for 
Loeb to see that the exceptionally harmonically developed 
systems are the only ones of a large number that we perceive, 
and so "we gain the erroneous impression that the adaptation 
of parts to the plan of the whole is a general and specific char- 
acteristic of animal nature, whereby the latter differs from in- 
animate nature." He thinks, and with some plausibihty, that 
if we knew intimately the mechanism of the atoms, we should 
find that there also " the chemical elements are only few dura- 



22 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

ble systems among a large nimiber of possible but not durable 
combinations." 

From these assumptions, putting away as nothing worth men- 
tioning all the metaphysics of the ages, he brushes aside the 
whole question with his sweeping assertion: "Nobody doubts 
that the durable chemical elements are only the product of 
blind forces. There is no reason for conceiving otherwise the 
durable systems in living matter" (pp. 24-26). We may ac- 
cept Loeb's reasoning so far as it consists in putting together 
the two parts of nature, the animate and the inanimate, and 
then raising the question of them both whether "blind forces" 
are sufficient to account for either of them. But this inquiry of 
both would not be a mere play on words; it is a question of his 
assumptions as "romantic" science; and it is also a rational 
interrogation of the metaphysical presimiptions, on which, ap- 
parently unconsciously to Professor Loeb, his mechanistic theory 
of the world, and ourselves in it, is based. But unconscious or 
sub-conscious metaphysics is apt to be poor metaphysics. (See 
a discriminating discussion of the mechanical theory of models 
— such as Loeb's — and of the use both of concrete representa- 
tions and of mental concepts in physics, in a recent volume by 
Professor Aliotta, The Idealistic Reaction Against Science, 
chap. V.) 

Loeb's confidence in his successful experiments and his im- 
conscious metaphysics carry him so far that he believes not 
only that the nature of the living cell, but also the contents of 
the inner life, will eventually become amenable to a physico- 
chemical analysis (p. 26). He bases this belief on the fact that 
it is already possible for us to explain cases of simple manifesta- 
tions of animal instincts on a physico-chemical basis. He as- 
serts that we may now safely state that the apparent will or 
instinct of helio tropic animals "resolves itself into a modifica- 
tion of the action of the muscles through the influence of light; 
and for the metaphysical term of 'will' we may in these in- 
stances safely substitute the chemical term 'photo-chemical 
action of light'" (p. 30). Thus all the higher life of humanity — 
social, ethical, religious — is reduced by a single bold stroke to 
the flight of moths toward a flame or the gathering of a num- 
ber of plant-lice in the end of a tube turned to the light. And 



THE EARLIEST SIGNS OF MEANING 23 

Professor Loeb hastens to assure us that " not only is the mech- 
anistic conception of life compatible with ethics; it seems 
the only conception of life which can lead to an understanding 
of the source of ethics" (p. 31). Later on we shall have occa- 
sion to inquire how judgments of vital values can be thus de- 
veloped from organic tropisms; we leave the matter here with 
the conclusion that it is too great a tax upon human experi- 
ence to accept the light of Professor Loeb's laboratory as indeed 
the light of all our seeing. 



CHAPTER II 

BEGINNINGS OF MIND IN NATURE 

We become aware of ourselves as personal entitles of 
some kind. But what is our life? Of what elements is 
it formed, and whence is the continuous flow of personal 
life? We find ourselves existing in the midst of things, 
around us a great world of sight and sense, ourselves a 
part of all that we touch and see. So far as appears at 
first thought we are natural results of the whole of nature. 
Not immediately at birth, but gradually — we cannot re- 
member when — we learned to distinguish ourselves from 
the world into which without any knowledge or consent 
of ours we came. But we have found ourselves in time 
discriminated very definitely and intensely from all the 
rest of nature — our little spheres of personal life self- 
centred and self-defined in the midst of a limitless uni- 
verse — our Hfe within ourselves not to be broken down 
or flooded out by the forces that beat from all sides upon 
it, and against which it persistently reacts. What does 
this personal energy disclose of its source and quality? 
From what it does may we understand what it is ? How 
are we to conceive of its relations as a force in a universe 
of forces? Such is the old question of the soul concern- 
ing itself put in the terms of modern thought. Nature 
and self are both given in our conscious life : how are we 
to conceive of them both as they are given to us in our 
personal experience? 

In the preceding chapter we have noticed the tendency 
of natural science to sublimate matter. The scientific 
conception of it transcends the indivisible atoms, ethere- 
ahzes, electrifies, strips of the vestiges of sensible materi- 

24 



BEGINNINGS OF MIND IN NATURE 25 

ality the external world, to leave us at length, not indeed 
in a world of disembodied spirits, but in a realm of mathe- 
matical positions and equations, of electrons disembodied 
from the molecules, and of vibrations throughout a hy- 
pothetical medium impossible of representation in sen- 
sible imagery. Nevertheless, this scientific knowledge, 
which divests matter of the commonly received ideas of 
substantial existence, by no means leaves it robbed of 
wondrous potencies of organic Hfe. It is suspected that 
mind is rudimentary in nature. Before man's members 
were fashioned, before the higher animals with brains an- 
ticipatory of man's existed — earlier than the primitive 
differentiation of nerve-cells and acquisition of definite 
points of sense-perception — even in the behavior of sim- 
ple, sensitive protozoa, and, so some botanists (as Fran- 
■ cis Darwin) make bold to say, at the apex of the root of 
a plant, premonitions of intelligent action are to be sur- 
mised; indications at least are discerned of a tendency to 
use trial methods in the struggle for existence, and of a 
fundamental capacity in living things to learn how to 
react in such ways that they may continue to live and 
to form also habits of organic conservation.^ A certain 
vital character of educabihty may be regarded as a natal 
gift and promise of the organic world. We keep within 
the limits of observation, and do not venture too far into 
speculative interpretations of animal behavior when we 
assume that matter and mind did not begin to be on this 
earth as two opposing factors of evolution. The kingdom 
of embodied mind, to which man has come, was not from 
the beginning a divided kingdom; mutual fitness and 
progressive adaptation have been from the first charac- 
teristic of the co-evolution of body and soul. The devel- 
oped duahsm, which we discover in our conscious life (of 
which animal life beneath us may be unconscious), is not 
a primary and irreconcilable antithesis of nature. It is 

* See Calkins, G. A., Protozoa, p. 279. 



26 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

late in coming to recognition in the natural history of 
mind. Genetic psychology may assure us that we are 
not compelled to hold any preconceived philosophic ideas 
of an original and necessary dualism between matter and 
mind, and consequently of some parallel but independent 
development of both; on the contrary, in the course of 
evolution we may discover an increasing differentiation 
between material sequences and mental action, and hence 
are free to follow to its ultimate rational conclusion the 
natural history of the dominance of mind. We shall gain 
no better assurance of the final distinction and supremacy 
of mind in nature by despising its humble origins, or deny- 
ing its earliest awakening and age-long course of educa- 
tion.^ By isolating the self primarily from nature we do 
not finally unite it with God. The question when and 
where and how intelligence first became the dominant 
and directive factor of life is purely a question of fact; 
and here the biologists have opened an interesting field 
of inquiry, which has as yet been explored only around its 
borders. 

The physical structure for the higher mental activi- 
ties has been gradually acquired in the nervous system. 
Some account, then, of its development and functioning 
(although quite general and untechnical) is necessary for 
our further inquiry .^ 

In some of the lowest organisms, consisting of a single 
cell, an elementary nervous conductivity may be dis- 
cerned; as in the Vorticella, for example, which may be 
watched under the microscope as it alternately expands 
or withdraws its pretty fringed bell at the free end of a 
slender stem. It is only a little microscopic cell ; but that 
has been differentiated into three functional parts; a re- 

* One botanist, Nolle, goes so far as to speak of what he names Morpfues- 
thesia, or "the feeling for form" in plants, as in Siphonia, an order of marine 
algae. Cited by Driesch, Science and Philosophy of the Organism, p. 157. 

' The standard work on this subject is Sherrington's book on The Integra- 
tive Action of the Nervous System, Scribners, 1906. 



BEGINNINGS OF MIND IN NATURE 27 

ceptor (the ciliated peristome) at the free end of the cell; 
an effector (its contractive element) at the fixed end; 
and the conductive intermediate part. A stimulus reach- 
ing it at the free end is transmitted through the proto- 
plasm of the cell to the other end of the cell, and the 
expansion or contraction follows. This triune differentia- 
tion into receptors, effectors, and conductors is funda- 
mental in the nervous system. The next stage, however, 
in the development of the nervous system does not con- 
sist, as might have been expected, in the continuation of 
this differentiation of functions within a single cell. On 
the contrary, a new method is introduced; the conductor, 
in the nervous system of more developed organisms (in 
a simple reflex arc), is a separate cell interposed between 
a receptive and effective cell. And different receptors 
through conductive ramifications (which I will not de- 
scribe in detail) may act upon the same motor neurones 
and by this means stimuli at a number of sensitive recep- 
tive points may be combined in a joint effective response. 
Also at the other, the effector end, the minute branching 
of the conductor places it in touch with many effective 
cells. This simple nerve pattern renders possible the de- 
velopment of the complex nervous system. The mecha- 
nism of conjoint and interlacing neurones (nerve-cells) 
provides for a gathering together of stimuli from different 
points and their summation in a common effect, and also 
secures a more effective reaction through a final common 
path in contact at its end-filaments with many cells of 
glands and muscles. In this way the organism becomes 
more quickly and effectively responsive to its environ- 
ment. 

Now, this change in method of organization from the 
primitive differentiation of the Vorticella to the multi- 
cellular and ramified nervous structure of an organism 
possessing a proper nervous system, may seem to have 
been but a slight transition and a step easily accomplished; 



28 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

but it is just at such short steps and slight advances that 
purely mechanical interpretations of evolution are brought 
to a halt by the questions, how? and why? which the 
philosopher of nature interposes. Whatever reasons we 
may find to account for it, this fact itself is of far-reaching 
import; the length of the conductor includes at least 
originally two neurones in succession, and upon the re- 
flex arc so constituted is securely laid the foundation of 
the whole subsequent structure and marvellous integration 
of the complex nervous organization that exists in the 
higher animals and is found waiting for mental use and 
control in man.^ How, then, or with what adaptive stim- 
ulation, the natural philosopher must ask, was that muta- 
tion brought about ? 

The further development to be accounted for may be 
stated in general as follows: The simpler forms of ner- 
vous organization consist of scattered mechanisms quite 
independent in their action except as they may have con- 
tact with similar neighboring groups. It is a diffuse 
rather than a centraUzed nervous organization. In the 
higher animals a system of longer and direct nerve con- 
nections has been developed; it is technically known as 
the "synaptic system"; that is, it is composed of nerve- 
cells which have at their surfaces adjustable junctions 

^Mr. Sherrington adds to his account of this mechanism the remark: 
"But — and it is a striking fact — we do not know of any reflex arc in which 
in fact the nervous conductor, connecting receptor to effector, is formed 
from end to end of one single neurone. The length of the conductor seems 
always to include at least two neurones in succession." Such arrangements 
as Vorticella, and others, he says, "do not exhibit the germ of a feature that 
we have already considered fundamental in the construction of the reflex 
nervous system. The cases cited do not exhibit even in germ the co- 
ordinative mecham'sm which is attained by the principle of the common 
path" (p. 310). Moreover, through this arrangement of several conjoint 
neurones not only simimations of stimuli or common paths of stimulation 
become possible, but also another power equally fundamental is gained — 
that of inhibition or the capacity of counteraction between different stimuli, 
"the two great co-ordinative processes of pluri-receptive summation and of 
interference" (pp. 310-311). 



BEGINNINGS OF MIND IN NATURE 29 

with one another. This system has as its distinctive fea- 
ture a central nervous organization through which dis- 
tant parts of the body may be brought into co-ordination, 
different organs may be rung up. The central nervous 
system may be described as the meeting-place and clear- 
ing-house of the nervous paths and exchanges from the 
peripheral and deeper-seated organs of the body. Single 
nerve-paths at the start may converge into common paths 
toward the central organ; and from it stimulations, which 
come up from the exterior, are sent through a final com- 
mon path to the motor-organs. Some further character- 
istics of this nervous integration, which are elucidated in 
Mr. Sherrington's masterly treatise, remain to be noticed 
as having significance for the interpretation of intelligent 
fife. 

One is the interesting question raised by the observa- 
tion that several nervous factors may be combined in a 
single stimulation; as, for instance, the two images in 
the left and right eye are fused in one perception. Sher- 
rington, as a result of much ingenious experimentation, 
has reached the conclusion that spatial fusion of these 
visual sensations is not necessary, only their co-existence 
in time. He questions the hypothesis that "if we could 
unite the brains of two human beings by a path of com- 
munication equivalent to cerebral fibres, both would have 
no longer two but one consciousness." He says: "Pure 
conjunction in time without necessarily cerebral conjunc- 
tion in space lies at the root of the solution of the problem 
of the unity of mind."^ We shall recur later on to this 
conclusion and its further significance. We note in pass- 
ing the break in the purely mechanical theory of mental 
action which is made by the absence of any necessary 
spatial junction in this process of sense-perception. For 
the non-spatial co-ordination, which Sherrington assumes, 
working qualitatively in time, but not quantitatively in 

i/W<i., p. 384. 



30 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

space, is not merely mechanical, whatever else it may be.* 
The fact of such co-ordination and timing of energy cannot 
be fitted, without violence, into a purely spatial concep- 
tion of mental action. 

Another question, which Sherrington's investigations 
raise, should here be noticed. Physiology teaches that 
consciousness is adjunct to the nerve-centres which exert 
control over the actions of the organism, and the primary 
function of consciousness is their control. In a mere 
automaton consciousness would seem to be useless. In 
the higher animals "the reactions of reflex arcs are con- 
trollable by mechanisms to whose activity consciousness 
is adjunct." Control through the higher cerebral cen- 
tres of reflex actions is complicated by the fact that "by 
these higher centres, this or that reflex can be checked 
or released, or modified in its reaction with such variety 
and seeming independence of external stimuli that the ex- 
istence of a spontaneous internal process expressed as 
'will' is the naive inference drawn." Looking at it purely 
from the physiological side, without raising the question 
as to the "spring" of this action, Sherrington says: "It 
is urgently necessary for physiology to know how this 
control — volitional control — is operative upon reflexes, 
that is, how it intrudes and makes its influence felt upon 
the running of the reflex machinery. How is the cough, 
or eye-closure, or the impulse to smile suppressed?" (p. 
388). He adds: " Certain it is that if we study the proc- 
ess by which in ourselves this control over reflex action 
is acquired by an individual, psychical factors loom large, 
and more is known of them than of the purely physiolog- 
ical modus operadni involved in the attainment of the 
control" (p. 390). 

^ Not mechanical if we adhere to KirchofiF's definition of mechanics, which 
as Merz rightly observed marks an era in scientific thought: "Mechanics 
is the science of motion; we define her task: to describe completely and in 
the simplest manner the actions which take place in nature." This fusion 
above described is not of motions in space, but a synthesis of events in time. 



BEGINNINGS OF MIND IN NATURE 31 

Without entering further into the details of the struc- 
ture of the nervous system, which are to be found in the 
physiological text-books, the sketch just given of some of 
its most striking mechanisms and functions is sufficient 
to open before us several interesting inquiries, if we are 
to search for a rational interpretation of its genesis and 
working. How, we must ask, without some psychic ac- 
tion are sense-stimuH (such as those mentioned by Sher- 
rington) fused in visual perception? How is voluntary 
control over convergence of the eyeballs, for instance, 
independently of the stimulus of fixation on a near object 
initiated? How are chemical and mechanical stimuli 
compounded in one nerve-impulse ? Granting that, if we 
had more knowledge of physiological subtleties, such 
special integrations might conceivably be explained with- 
out the interposition of any psychic action, a more funda- 
mental question, underlying the whole organization of the 
nervous system, remains: How and under what influence, 
for what occasion, if for any, was the first, all-decisive step 
taken from the diffuse undifferentiated matter of life in the 
primitive single cell to definitely formed nerve-conductors, 
differentiated into at least two cells, and thereby a new 
beginning made of an intricate network of reflex actions 
and interactions? Grant that the process of construc- 
tion and reconstruction was a continuous evolution; ad- 
mit that existing conditions were enough (could we know 
them all) to account for the transformation of a single 
protoplasmic cell, which did not contain, into two neu- 
rones which did contain, the germ of a future complicated 
nervous organization; among those existing conditions 
was there any formative factor? Or was this only a 
lucky hit? Or, again, if contingency is to be excluded 
from a world of order, and if the primal necessity of living 
matter to keep itself alive be assumed among the first 
principles of evolution, the question is only pushed back: 
Whence the necessity of surviving and consequently of 



32 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

vital selection of forms best fitted for survival? Was 
that a fortuitous necessity? The wonderfully developed 
nervous system is indeed simple in its fundamental prin- 
ciple. "The edifice of the whole central nervous system," 
says Sherrington, "is reared upon two neurones — the af- 
ferent root-cell and the efferent root-cell. These form 
the pillars of a fundamental reflex arch. And on the 
junction between these two are superposed and function- 
ally set, mediately or immediately, all the other neural 
arcs, even those of the cortex of the cerebrum itself" (p. 
319). How, then, did it ever happen that these two funda- 
mental pillars were fashioned and put exactly into posi- 
tion, so that upon them might be built the whole nervous 
framework of the highest and most capacious life even 
of man himseK? Wherefore was it inevitable that this 
must be as it has become ? What has forced chaos to take 
any form, and at length such form as the nerve-arc on 
which this compUcated structure has been built? Thus 
at the beginning of our modern physiological knowledge 
of ourselves Aristotle's problem of matter and form meets 
us again, and waits for solution. Some answer to it must 
be found, if we are to reach any rational interpretation 
of our Ufe. We know far better than the ancients that 
in the course of evolution an undifferentiated nervous 
matter — a formless nerve something — has become differ- 
entiated in the neural organization; but Aristotle might 
well inquire of our science. What have been the forma- 
tive principles of this order of evolution? Certainly the 
first steps of nervous organization have led to momentous 
results. We leave these initial questions unanswered as 
suggestive possibilities of further meanings to be found 
along the way of ascending life. 

Before turning, however, to introspective psychology 
we have to inquire next what physiological psychology has 
ascertained concerning the interesting border-land that 



BEGINNINGS OF MIND IN NATURE 33 

lies between purely physical and clearly intelligent action 
— the instinctive side of life. This intermediate region 
in the development of intelligence has of late years been 
industriously explored and with improved methods of in- 
vestigation. Much effort has been made to understand 
better the animal mind beneath us. By comparison of 
different degrees of seemingly intelHgent behavior in the 
animal world it is sought to trace more definitely the way 
through which human intelligence has been acquired, and 
the ultimate worth of mind in nature attained. 

With the earliest beginnings of nervous differentiation 
habits of reaction become possible, and step by step with 
increasing organization instincts useful to Hfe are formed 
and inherited. In recent studies of habit and instinct, 
two methods of investigation have been pursued — the ob- 
servational and the experimental. The behavior of 
animals has been scientifically watched, and recorded 
with careful precision; and so far as possible the obser- 
vations have been experimentally repeated, varied, and 
tested for the purpose of verification and valuation. But 
as no animal can speak in our language, in whatever 
tongues they may call to one another, insight into their 
mental life can only be gained through reflection back upon 
their behavior of our own intelligent conduct. Herein 
lies the wide-open possibihty of misunderstandings of the 
animal mind, and hence likewise of mistaking the way 
through instinctive behavior to the final attainment of 
human intelligence. 

As animal instinct is the forerunner of intelligence, so 
the precursor of instinct is the primitive capacity of an 
organism to become modified in adaptive response to en- 
vironment. Hence some biologists are inclined to place 
the primary roots of instinct in the constitutional activities 
of protoplasm, and to regard instinct at every stage of its 
evolution as depending essentially on organization. In- 
deed it is doubtful whether at any point on the scale of 



34' THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

life we can say that it is an absolute psychic zero. We 
are told by close observers of the behavior of unicellular 
organisms, such as Paramecium, that the organism "reacts 
as an individual, not as a substance"; and that even in 
very low forms of life something like organic habits may 
be discerned. 

Two views of the genesis of animal instinct have been 
held, with many variations between them — the selective 
theory of Darwin and the Neo-Darwinians, and the habit 
theory of the Lamarckians. Possibly some modification 
of the two may prove to be the result of this prolonged 
biological discussion. At present some theory of germ 
modification rather than immediate transmission of ac- 
quired habits seems preferable; but in the statements 
above, it is not necessary for our interpretative purpose 
to enter into this disputed region. Lloyd Morgan re- 
stricts "the term instinctive in its biological acceptation 
to congenital modes of behavior dependent upon inherited 
dispositions within the lower brain centres." Professor 
Stout criticises Morgan's view of the origin of instinct on 
the ground that some intelligence, however vague, must 
be involved in learning by experience. "Intelligence 
must accompany every instinctive act which leads to in- 
telligent modification of behavior or its repetition in a 
similar situation." ^ Similarly Doctor C. S. Meyers re- 
gards the separation of instinct and intelligence as "a 
purely artificial abstraction." ^ McDougall contends that 
"instincts are more than innate tendencies or disposi- 
tions to certain kinds of movement. There is every 
reason to believe that even the most purely instinctive 
action is the outcome of a distinctly mental process, one 
that is incapable of being described in purely mechanical 
terms, because it is a psycho-physical process," etc' So 

* Analytical Psychology, pp. 237 seq. 

' British Journal of Psychology, vol. Ill, pp. 209, 270. 

* Introduction to Social Psychology, p. 26. 



BEGINNINGS OF MIND IN NATURE 35 

Wundt likewise defines instincts: "Movements which 
originally followed upon simple or compound voluntary- 
acts, but which have become wholly or partly mechanized 
in the course of individual life or of generic evolution, we 
term instinctive actions." ^ Does not the variance be- 
tween these views of instinct result from the difficulty 
here as elsewhere in nature of drawing arbitrary lines 
across the process of evolution, of determining just where 
or how the reflex process passes over into the process of 
learning; or what initial preperception, as Morgan would 
say, may be the beginning of individual experience and of 
intelligent modification of congenital modes of behavior? 
In any case, somewhere, somehow, the psychic factor 
must have entered and become directive of conduct and 
formative of habit. 

A curious illustration of the capacity of living matter 
to assume an organic form of reaction (which might be 
regarded as instinctive habit) is furnished by a species 
of small flatworms (Convoluta rosocffensis) which exist in 
large numbers ofif the coast of Brittany. Just above the 
water-line as the tide rises they sink in the sand, and so 
escape being washed away; when the tide ebbs they 
creep up and begin to appear on the surface again. "If 
the worms are removed to an aquarium, where the tide 
no longer acts upon them, they continue to go downward 
at the period of high tide, upward at the period of low 
tide. This continues for about two weeks, so that the 
worms may be carried far away from shore, and used for 
a time as tide indicators."^ This rhythmic alternation of 
movement has become a protoplasmic habit. 

The common opinion that instinct was given to animals 
for their protection as a ready-made gift of creation, as 
well as the view that instincts are so much lapsed intelli- 
gence, are not scientifically tenable. Animal instinct can 

^ Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology, tr., p. 388. 
2 H. S. Jennings, Behavior of the Lower Organisms, p. 255. 



36 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

no longer be adduced as direct evidence of "the guidance 
of the Almighty's hand unseen." There is guidance, to 
be sure, in instinct, and the hand that guides is unseen; 
no microscope can render its touch visible. But in- 
stinct is known to be an acquired organic aptitude; and, 
while a wide separation exists between reasoned conduct 
and the most seemingly intelligent instinctive behavior, 
nevertheless here as elsewhere in the development of 
mind nature knows no impassable gulf; no absolute 
breaks of continuity can be said to occur in "creative evo- 
lution." Instinct as scientifically known is a primary 
mode of action unmodified by individual experience, cor- 
responding to an inherited compound reflex. Instinct is 
regarded by some authorities as a relation between struc- 
ture and function; as the evolution, for instance, of the 
wings of a bird and the use of them in flying have pro- 
ceeded together. According to this view it is nothing 
but the specific function of a definite inherited structure. 
It is "the response of inherited structure to stimulus." 
It is thus closely related to a reflex act of the nervous 
system. It is not, however, a single reflex act, but a 
definite combination of reflex acts, which has been selec- 
tively acquired in adaptation to vital needs; this adap- 
tive combination of reflexes is the elementary and specific 
character of all instinctive actions properly so called. 
We may accept as a comprehensive description of in- 
stinctive action from the biological point of view the fol- 
lowing summary from Mr. Morgan's work on Eahit and 
Instinct: "Instincts are congenital, adaptive, and co- 
ordinated activities of relative complexity, and involving 
the behavior of the organism as a whole. They are not 
characteristic of individuals as such, but are similarly 
performed by all like members of the same more or less 
restricted group, under circumstances which are either of 
frequent recurrence or are vitally essential to the con- 
tinuance of the race. While they are, broadly speaking, 



BEGINNINGS OF MIND IN NATURE 37 

constant in character, they are subject to variations anal- 
ogous to that found in organic structures. They are often 
periodic in development and serial in character. They 
are to be distinguished from habits which owe their defi- 
niteness to individual acquisition and the repetition of in- 
dividual performance" (p. 27). 

One cannot infer at once from the seeming intelligence 
of some animal actions that the animal possesses a specific 
capracity of intelligent self-direction. For numerous in- 
stances are given of seemingly intelligent acts of bees and 
wasps, which, on the other hand, are observed to act in 
utterly stupid and purposeless ways. Morgan gives an 
account of a beetle which, on being unable to roU its ball 
before it up a hollow, went to work and "butted down the 
sand at one side of the hollow so as to produce an isolated 
plane of much less angle." ^ That was a good piece of 
engineering work. But these same beetles, which will 
help each other push their balls before them, at breeding- 
time fail to distinguish between dififerent particles, and 
will roll any small balls of wood or stone into their store. 
Mr. Hobhouse remarks that this contrast of dull and 
hopelessly irrational uniformity with highly adaptive con- 
trivances remains the most remarkable feature of insect 
economy. 

The ultimate distinction between pure instinct and in- 
telligence is sufficiently obvious, and the process of suf- 
fusing instinct with intelligence, of its "intelligent varia- 
tion and modification" may be quite well traced until its 
final control by intelligence becomes dominant. But it 
is difficult biologically to say just where the one kind of 
action passes over into the other; as difficult, indeed, as 
it is to draw the line between animal and plant life in the 
earHest organic forms. Here also the continuities of na- 
ture are too deep for our logical definitions. Our abstract 
classifications are artificial distinctions necessary for our 

* Animal Life, p. 368. 



38 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

conceptual map of nature (as our degrees of latitude and 
longitude); but they are not actual separations in the 
real unity and flow of evolution. Yet as resultant facts 
and features of the existing creation and its one creative 
process they are true discriminations and correspond to 
nature. 

The account which has thus been given raises the in- 
teresting question how far, if at all, instinctive action 
may be regarded as accompanied by consciousness. Mr. 
Morgan thinks that "intelligent experience as distin- 
guished from instinctive action arises as soon as the higher 
brain-centres are called into activity and play down upon 
and modify processes of the subcortical centres." At 
the first peck of a chick a certain sentience without con- 
scious guidance may exist; but repeated pecks and the 
constant habit of pecking involve what he distinguishes 
as "effective consciousness," by which the automatic in- 
stinct of a chick in its first response to the organic need 
and stimulus of food is guided. For the chick learns 
through experience to guide to better effect its instinct; 
and experience implies consciousness enough to hold in 
one act a past and present response. The activities of 
the chick are guided through experience to further per- 
fection; consequently the automatic response gives rise 
to consciousness in the light of which the chick's future 
activities may be guided and controlled.^ By effective 
consciousness he means "that which enables an animal 
to guide its action in the light of previous experience." 
Different degrees, also, or planes of consciousness may be 
supposed accompanying successive stages of the develop- 
ment of instinct and experience. 

A radically different view of instinct has been presented 
by Bergson in his Creative Evolution. He agrees so far 
with the current theories as to suppose that instinct and 
intelligence have a common organic origin, and that in 

^ Habit and Instinct, p. 127. 



BEGINNINGS OF MIND IN NATURE 39 

concrete instances both are more or less interfused. But 
he has put forward the brilliant speculation that they in- 
dicate two divergent lines on which evolution has pro- 
ceeded. The same impulse of Hfe moves through both; 
but in the way of instinct it became blocked, and could 
go no further in that way when it had reached the per- 
fection of instinctive action in the most finely wrought 
instincts of animal Hfe. It proved impossible to attain 
in this way the goal of free, self-determinative Hfe. The 
creative evolutionary impulse or energy, not to be baffled, 
tries another way; along the path of vertebrate structure 
and increasing dominance of the central organs — the 
dominant brain — it moves on toward an indeterminate 
Hfe, not bound in a mechanical necessity, self-creative, 
self -impelling, self-conscious; such a dynamic Hfe as is 
ever reaHzing itself in the flow of our free action. Vege- 
tative torpor, instinct, and intelHgence he regards as the 
"elements that coincided in the vital impulsion common 
to plants and animals, and which, in the course of devel- 
opment in which the elements were made manifest in the 
most unforeseen forms, have been dissociated by the very 
fact of their growth. The cardinal error which, from 
Aristotle onward, has vitiated most of the philosophies of 
nature is to see in vegetative, instinctive, and rational 
Hfe three successive stages of the development of one and 
the same tendency, whereas they are three divergent di- 
rections of an activity that has split up as it grew." This 
speculation of Bergson finds some support in the striking 
fact that instinct has attained its finest development along 
the Hne of the Arthropoda and is carried to its culminating 
point in insects, as in bees, while Hfe has climbed up to 
intelligence along the vertebrate line and attained its 
summit in the brain of man. It is noteworthy that we 
find "instinct becoming more general as we descend the 
scale, while intelligence emerges to view more and more 
as we ascend to the higher orders of animal Hfe." But 



40 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

Bergson's supposition of a difference in kind between 
these two divergent developments is a philosophical after- 
thought rather than a necessary biological conclusion 
from observation of the branching of the tree of life in 
these several directions; it will hardly win acceptance 
among biologists who would discard all philosophical pos- 
tulates. It has value, however, in so far as it brings out 
and emphasizes the fact, the significance of which is too 
often obscured in purely biological writings, that the main 
direction of life has been away from the merely mechan- 
ical and toward the intelligent control of organized matter; 
that the issue of the evolutionary movement has not been 
the perfection of animal instinct, but along the main line 
of advance success has finally been attained in the libera- 
tion of free, intelligent action. 

The general survey just given of the nature and func- 
tioning of instinct brings before us some characteristics 
of instinctive action which have suggestive meaning for 
the interpretation of life. One of these significant indi- 
cations in the growth of instinct is that through it living 
matter is separated still further from inorganic stuff; it 
is carried a long distance on in the acquisition of power 
of co-ordinated action useful to the immediate needs of 
life. Instinctive life, as it is perfected in some insects, 
marks a new and marvellous advance of organic co-ordina- 
tion over inorganic combination. What this gain in vital 
value may mean remains for us to inquire further on. 

Another character of instinctive life is its regulative 
action. It evinces organic control of life for further ends 
of life; it is, in a word, a means of life, and as such must 
have some meaning in the evolution of life. This regu- 
lative control of organic reactions is discernible even in 
the unicellular Protozoa. As many biological observers 
have suggested, "there exist in every organism a power 
of adaptation and certain co-ordinating factors by which 



BEGINNINGS OF MIND IN NATURE 41 

the organism acts as an individual or a unit, notwith- 
standing the fact that its body is composed of a great 
number of chemically different substances. At the pres- 
ent time these co-ordinating factors and the power of 
adaptation transcend physical or chemical analysis, and 
raise the lowest protozoon immeasurably above inanimate 
objects, and perhaps justify in a modern sense the much 
abused term vitaUsm."^ Of the behavior of these primi- 
tive organisms, Mr. Calkins, who has made a prolonged 
study of them, remarks further: "In some instances, no- 
tably in the more complicated forms, it appears that the 
organism as a whole is endowed with a set of motor re- 
sponses which might be identified as instinctive. Stim- 
ulation at one point induces not a local response, as in 
Rhizopoda, but a reaction of the entire organism, which is 
poorly explained by the assumption of a machine-like 
organization of the cell, or by the statement that these 
responses are merely the expression of chemical and 
physical forces. "^ 

Another significant character of instincts is that while 
primarily they may be purely reflex responses to a given 
stimulus, they lead to anticipative action; they are not 
only perceptive, but they are beginnings at least of some 
preperceptive awareness of some following consequent. 
They connect the present with some consequent. As 
such they become representative; they represent v/hat 
has been experienced. Instincts thus have recognizable 
values or meanings for Hfe and the end to be secured of 
its survival. Through animal instincts hfe enters the 
realm of values. They become means for vital uses under 
the control of intelligence, and they may be modified 
through conscious experience. The sight of food, or the 
mere touch of a solid object, for instance, may represent 
something having value for an organism. To an amceha 
a sohd body represents a means of support as it moves 

•Calkins, G. A., The Protozoon, p. 279. ^Ibid., p. 301. 



42 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

into contact with it; the white hydra moves toward a 
source of light, around which its prey congregates. "Or- 
ganisms," says Jennings, "react appropriately to represen- 
tative stimuli." He adds: "In man we call this foresight, 
anticipation, prudence, etc."^ 

One other marked feature is of distinctive importance: 
viz., instinct is useful up to a certain limit. Up to that 
point it is a dominant factor; beyond it in the higher 
animals it becomes a recessive factor; in man it is subor- 
dinated to conscious control. Henceforth experience is 
no longer organized instinct, but is rationally organized 
as the basis of conduct; conscious choice and use of means 
has become the progressive method of life. We must 
follow, then, this method of advancing life in search for 
further signs of meaning in the whole process of life from 
its lowly origins. Before proceeding to do so, we would 
look back for a moment and recount the successive steps 
which we have thus far followed in the way of organic 
progress since life was once started on the earth. 

Far back as life began, deeper down into the mystery 
of its origins than microscope may penetrate, an ele- 
mentary capacity for nervous organization seems to have 
existed in Hving matter. A diffuse "circulation or dis- 
tribution" throughout the whole organism, formative in 
growth, is assumed by some biologists. ^ Reflex movements 
are observed not only in simple animated organisms, but 
also in plants. In a species of grass, Setaria, for example, 
the seed as soon as it germinates does not produce a 
cylindrical stem, but one terminating in a wedge-shaped 
tip like a lance-head. When a group of Setaria is Hghted 
from one side, it inclines strongly toward that side, and 
all the lance-tips point toward the light. But these tips 
are not curved at all ; on the contrary, the whole bending 
is produced in the stem. The interesting fact is that the 

* Behavior of the Lower Organisms, p. 2)Z2>- 

* So E. Rignano, Inheritance of Acquired Characters, pp. 29 seq. 



BEGINNINGS OF MIND IN NATURE 43 

tip is the point sensitive to the light, not the stem; yet 
the stem bends, not the tip. This is proved by covering 
the tops of some stems with an opaque cap; then, the 
grass stalks so protected remain vertical, while others, 
not so protected, incline their stems toward the light. 
Hence the httle lance-head is the plant's sensitive organ, 
while the stem is the responsive motile region.- This ele- 
mentary capacity for nerve structure becomes more and 
more distinctively developed, until through a series of 
changes, on an ascending scale of vital values, at length 
it is elaborately organized and firmly co-ordinated. 
Furthermore, we have observed that this development has 
been twofold, a parallel advance of structure and function. 
It is a continuous process; as we look back upon it, it 
appears to be an unbroken succession of steps or stages, 
not without divergences and retrogressions, but in the 
main advancing in the same direction. We have ob- 
served likewise that what is useful to Kfe is retained so 
long as it is useful; otherwise it recedes and is superseded 
by some organic modification and more serviceable func- 
tioning in adaptive response to environment. The ten- 
dency has been to discard the form that has outlasted its 
usefulness, and to try some form that may prove more 
serviceable. We have seen that in the age-long course of 
this organic struggle and the victories of life on the earth, 
after sentience and a certain degree of animal awareness 
had been acquired, an ''effective consciousness" at length 
was gained in man, who was distinguished from the 
animals when he first left records of himself in the cave- 
dwellings, by the fact that he not only could use what 
nature had furnished him in his own body, but he could 
make and use tools for his vital purposes. "Effective 
consciousness," as Morgan has happily characterized it, 
is something more than instinctive readiness of organic 

* Francis Darwin, " Le mouvement chez les plantes," Revue scientifique, 
March i, 1902, p. 265. Cited by Rignano, ibid., p. 54. 



44 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

responses; it is a selective, conative consciousness, de- 
termining from experience the one motor reaction among 
several which may be beneficial; and this effective con- 
sciousness (in whatever degree it may be presumed to 
exist in the higher animals), we may regard with Mr. 
Morgan as the foundation of intelligent experience, upon 
the basis of which may be raised the superior mental life 
of conception and judgment to which the human child 
falls heir. 

In view, then, of the ascertained facts of the develop- 
ment of the nervous system, and its distinctive characters, 
which we have summarized above, what may philosophic- 
ally be surmised as the interpretation of this portion of 
the history of mind in nature? We keep well within the 
limits of the known facts, and look in the direction toward 
which one after another they point, when we find at least 
the following signs of meaning in this part of the course 
of life — a vast distance and a gradual but great ascent 
as it has been from the primitive diffuse nervous poten- 
tial of living matter to the marvellously organized brain 
and its perfected system of neural exchange ready for 
control and varied uses at the will of the human child. 

I. In general the difficulties of reducing mind to matter 
are seen to increase the more we know of the evolution 
of both. By ingenious handling of some solutions ex- 
perimenters have succeeded in producing something re- 
sembling the alveolar structure and some particular fea- 
tures of the living cell, although they are unable as yet 
by any impartation of energy from without to give to 
their semblance of a cell the potency of life. The imita- 
tion soon fails, and any synthetic attempt to combine 
chemical elements in organic forms capable of living soon 
becomes impossible when we follow the real cell of nature's 
fashioning through its actual functioning, when we be- 
hold it at length developing into two neurones, growing 
into a stem branching at both ends, constructing a com- 



BEGINNINGS OF MIND IN NATURE 45 

plicated network of reflexes, crowning at last its work- 
manship with a cerebral organ of control, and awaiting 
the final subjection of itself to the service of conscious 
mind. As the distance widens, the difficulty of a merely 
physical interpretation likewise increases. At the start 
scientific manipulation may create a verisimilitude of a 
cell; again it may take up an egg of a lowly organism 
and by chemical stimulation start up its inner power of 
germination; and, having so actuated it, succeed in carry- 
ing it a little ways on in its self -differentiation and growth; 
but at the farther end of the ascent of life scientific imag- 
ination fails to leap over the distance in kind between 
matter and mind, although creative evolution has com- 
passed it. No biologist dreams of catching nature in the 
act of transforming an organic reaction into a thought of 
the heart. 

2. The more knowledge increases of the physical basis 
of life, the less becomes the probability that some time 
more knowledge may discover the psychical to be nothing 
but a physical compound. The direction, that is to say, 
of increasing knowledge is to leave materialistic theories 
farther and farther behind in the search for the ultimate 
interpretation of nature. 

When confronted with the difficulties in the way of 
accounting for psychological activities on a physical basis, 
the physiologist, who is inclined to that view, will reply, 
the difficulties lie only in the present limitations of our 
knowledge; if we knew a little more, the objections might 
begin to vanish. Meanwhile scientific biology has nothing 
to do with metaphysical hypotheses. But this answer in- 
volves the naive assumption that what is beyond present 
physical knowledge must necessarily be physical; that 
what is superchemical or infrachemical must of neces- 
sity be identical with known chemistry. And this as- 
sumption is ventured as a generalization from what is 
known of physical continuity within a limited circle and 



46 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

closed system of purely objective, experimental informa- 
tion. Now, there might be some show of probability for 
this assumption if the increase of this limited kind of 
knowledge should seem to lessen the difficulty, to bring 
out more and more close correspondence between labora- 
tory products and mental creations; to equate the ener- 
gies of the one in terms of the other; in short, to express 
the whole that is known of mind and its functions in the 
whole that is known of matter and its modes. But this 
is by no means the case. On the contrary, here again we 
notice that it has become harder and harder with the in- 
crease of scientific knowledge to apprehend the ultimate 
nature either of matter or mind, and still more to reduce 
all nature in the sum total of its manifestations of energy 
to a lifeless and mindless conglomerate of elemental stuff, 
or a fortuitous assembling of mechanical units. The mi- 
croscope has brought us no nearer the secret of form in 
nature, though it discloses the fine lines of a diatom. 
Chemical analysis leaves vital synthesis a more subtle 
potentiality than Lucretius could have conceived. Physi- 
cal science, passing beyond the atoms, which hitherto have 
been assumed to be the last limits of a material world, and 
opening a vast realm of radiant energies, has left behind 
as antiquated our clumsy conceptions of the materials of 
which the universe is built; it leaves imagination to look 
through the veil of the phenomenal for some further 
revelation of reality beyond the things that are seen. We 
must wait until we know, it is said. Yes, but as we wait, 
and knowledge grows, the natural expectation of life be- 
comes less materialistic and more profoundly spiritual. 
What has just been said is not an assertion that the 
meanings thus far suggested of themselves prove a 
physico-chemical interpretation to be impossible; but it 
challenges the assumption that there is any reason to 
suppose that further enlightenment would enable us to 
perceive in nature and personal being only material ele- 



BEGINNINGS OF MIND IN NATURE 47 

ments; whereas, the more we know just what the physical 
is, the more we know that it is less than the psychical. 
We do not read into these opening pages of life any ulti- 
mate meanings; but we would estimate them at their 
true value as indications and anticipations of some mean- 
ing that may be made clearer as we shall follow farther 
the direction which nature has taken toward personal life 
and its ultimate significance. It is enough, therefore, at 
this point of our inquiry to say that the pursuit of the 
course of organic neural differentiation and animal psy- 
chology puts us upon the scent of some non-physical form 
of energy, which introspective psychology shall seek, if 
possible, to overtake. And there is nothing in the facts 
already clearly ascertained to forbid, but rather a great 
deal to encourage, further and profounder pursuit after 
the psychical factor within the domain of personal experi- 
ence. 



CHAPTER III 

PERSONAL DYNAMICS 

We come to ourselves as so much power to do things. 
Consciousness awakes with action; sleep is unconscious- 
ness; we regain consciousness in some form of motion. A 
man is a dynamo in action conscious of its own working. 
The ultimate problem of personal life is not one of statics, 
but of the dynamics of conscious activity; what and 
whence is the movement, the energizing of such life, and 
whither does it go? 

This first awareness of ourselves as acting is a starting- 
point for self-investigation. This sense of ourselves was 
already present in our earliest recollections of ourselves; 
and beyond it we cannot pass in reflective research into 
our personal origin out of the mystery of being from 
whence we came to ourselves. Like other first impres- 
sions, this may prove to be mistaken; yet often our first 
impressions are apt to prove true to our third thoughts, 
although many doubts and questionings may intervene 
before final judgment is reached. This first sense of our- 
selves as living beings having power to do things persists 
in our consciousness of personal identity to the end of 
life. Utter loss of conscious activity is the sleep of death. 
Illumining the whole field of consciousness, although not 
itself the object on which conscious attention is focussed, 
the inward sense of power to act is the light in which we 
walk through the outward world with which we have to do. 

In this primal consciousness of self as active being there 
is immediately perceived no collection of several mental 
faculties nor dualism of our being in body and mind. 
We simply do things, and in the doing are aware of our- 

48 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 49 

selves as undivided beings. In our initial, unreflective 
feeling of existence the self is one, and what it does it 
does with all of itself. Indeed so subtly and closely are 
these factors of the physical and the psychical woven to- 
gether in the structure of our being that it might even be 
asked whether man would have come to the knowledge 
of himself as a dual thing — a body of flesh warring with 
the spirit — if death had not entered to tear asunder what 
nature at his birth had so wondrously joined together. 
Without a first experience of another's death, the sudden 
vanishing of the spirit and the dissolution of all that was 
left, might not a childhke sense of life in body and mind 
as one joyous existence have remained as the first truth 
and reahty of existence ? The coming of death may have 
had more uses than we think for life, for full conscious- 
ness of its deepest meaning and highest power. For one 
to realize to its bitter end this mortal dualism of the spirit 
and the flesh, and then, if it be possible, to apprehend 
both in some perfect unity, is in thought at least to put 
on immortality. 

Throwing out this passing thought to fall as it may, 
one thing is certain: in this world, where death is always 
with us, our early and living sense of personal unity re- 
mains always with us — ^unless indeed when we would be- 
come philosophers and analyze ourselves as objects of 
consciousness. We are aware of ourselves in acting as 
undivided selves, as personal wholes, just as nature put 
us together at birth and as our Hfe carries us along through 
the years. It is true that, since man began reflectively to 
break up his self-consciousness into many pieces, it has 
been the puzzle of the philosophers to understand how to 
put them together again. But this primal fact is note- 
worthy : the interaction of mind and body in the unreflec- 
tive awareness of the personal life, which it is difiicult for 
our reflective thought to understand, is a simple personal 
dynamic that nature has set up and kept energizing in 



so THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

our daily living. Something more than this may be said. 
In common experience the natural sense of personal unity 
appears in such expressions as "my body," or "we have 
bodies." We are embodied; the self has a body as part 
of itself. As the result of his investigations in physiology 
one may reason that the body has him and he is nothing 
else; but he does not live and act in that sense of himself. 
Or we may philosophically conceive that we exist in two 
parallel series as body and mind, bound together by some 
unknown tie, until both shall perish together — a theory, 
this, of mental and physical team-work without common 
signals or single direction, yet, notwithstanding, team-work 
usually of efifective action. However we may philosophize 
concerning it, anteceding, underlying, pervading the com- 
mon sense of men is the vital intuition, this first and last 
sense of personal unity. 

Is this an impression of reality, or is it only an illusion ? 
So critical thought compels us to ask our own sense of 
existence. We must follow, therefore, the physiologists 
and psychologists and diligently inquire of them what 
we may reasonably conceive ourselves to be. 

I. We begin with the fact that we become aware of 
ourselves as existing in relation to other bodies in space, 
and in the succession of our activities as taking note also 
of time. But what space and time are has been the puz- 
zle of metaphysics ever since man began to philosophize 
about himself. One simple affirmation with regard to 
space is true to our common sense of it; we are conscious 
that we are in space, but not of it. The actuality of 
something extended is experienced as we first come into 
touch with something not our perceiving self; the idea 
of space, unbounded and infinite, is borne in upon us as 
we look out and away. In this connection it is unneces- 
sary for us to enter into detailed discussion of the manner 
in which physiologically the sense-perception of extension 
may have been acquired. In our thoughtful life space 



.PERSONAL DYNAMICS 51 

may become a marginal consciousness, a receding horizon 
of our thought, no more in mind when we say, I am. The 
necessity of this spatial margin or setting of all our think- 
ing is another matter; though with Kant we must regard 
space as a necessary form of thought, it is not an integral 
element of the content of the consciousness of self. 
Space is most out of mind when we ourselves are most 
in mind. The more intensive our thinking becomes, the 
more our bodily extension is forgotten. Of moments of 
highest mental action as well as of rapt spiritual vision, 
men may say with an apostle: "Whether in the body or 
out of the body, I cannot tell." Here, then, in this primal 
sense of mental existence, we observe a distinct difference 
between the energy of our inner activities and the move- 
ments which relate us to objects extended in space. Our 
thoughts, as thoughts in relation to each other, are not 
placed as things are with reference to two or more points 
in space. Whatever, then, the relation of a thinking 
being may be to external space, it must be qualitatively 
different from the quantitative relation, which is mea- 
surable, of several bodies to one another in space. Our 
thoughts are not extended quantities, but modes of con- 
scious energizing. 

A keen and insistent exposition of this non-spatial quality of 
the flow of personal life is a distinctive service which Bergson 
has rendered to modern philosophy. We need not deny Kant's 
determination of space as a necessary category, when we main- 
tain with Bergson that thinking as an act and a succession of 
acts is not itself a process measurable in spatial relations; the 
thought as a static conception held objectively in relation to 
other formed ideas may fall under the category of space; but 
the act of thinking is not necessarily projected into space; nor 
is the order of logical sequence identical with spatial continuity. 
Hence, Bergson maintains, the distinction between body and 
mind is to be defined not in terms of space but of time. Deep- 
seated psychic states he regards as intensive, having no relation 



52 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

to extensity. They "do not seem to have any close relation 
to their external cause or to involve the perception of mus- 
cular contraction. But such states are rare." — {Time and Free 
Will, p. 20.) "When we make ourselves self-conscious in the 
highest possible degree, and then let ourselves fall back little 
by little, we get the feehng of extension: we have an extension 
of the self into recollections that are fixed and external to one 
another, in place of the tension it possessed as an indivisible 
active will." — {Creative Evolution, p. 207.) He would lead phil- 
osophy to a new point of view when he says: "Physics under- 
stands its r61e when it pushes matter in the direction of spati- 
ality; but has metaphysics understood its rdle when it has 
simply trodden in the steps of physics, in the chimerical hope 
of going farther in the same direction? Should not its own 
task be, on the contrary, to remount the incline that physics 
descends, to bring back matter to its origins, and to build up 
progressively a cosmology which would be, so to speak, a re- 
versed psychology?" — {Ibid., p. 208.) 

We draw nearer the living reality of ourselves when 
we seek to apprehend what time is. The conception of 
time, cleared so far as possible of all confusion with the 
idea of space, is the most intimate and the least submis- 
sive to intellectual grasp of all the elemental aspects of 
personal experience. 

2. Without entering into the endless discussions of 
time by the metaphysicians, we may put ourselves in the 
actual way in which we have come to our knowledge of 
it if we attempt to trace the natural history, so to speak, 
of our human consciousness of time. Comparative psy- 
chology has not much to teach us concerning the possible 
time-sense of the animal world. This is the more sig- 
nificant when we consider that much has been learned 
from the study of animal behavior concerning the space- 
sense of the animal mind; but conjectural statements 
merely may be ventured with regard to sub-human time, 
and these rest on inferences only from animal structure 
and habits. What, then, may be said of the phychological 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 53 

basis of our sense of time? We have no direct sense- 
perception of the succession of mental states; nor can we 
distinguish or measure exactly on any fixed inward scale 
the succession of our thoughts and feelings, as we can the 
relative positions of points in space. What are the in- 
tervals between ideas? Nevertheless, in the rhythm of 
reflex movements, or in the deeper organic fluctuations, 
there may possibly be given some physiological occasion 
for the genesis of the time-sense. The throbbing of the 
heart, the beatings of the pulse, the rhythmic flow of 
nervous currents to and fro may furnish physiological 
conditions enough for the psychic sense of time to spring 
up and gradually to become a definite mode or habit of 
the child's maturing consciousness. However occasioned, 
when once acquired, the time-sense would appear as an 
innate idea or an a priori form of conscious intelligence. 
Now, if such be the origin of the human sense of time, 
some interesting consequences for the higher interpreta- 
tion of our life seem to follow. For one thing, if such be 
its subjective origin, time cannot be regarded as having 
necessarily an absolute quantitative value. It is not a 
rate of motion measurable by an absolute standard. The 
time-rate for any species will depend upon the organic 
structure of the species; it is variant according to the 
physiological functioning of the individual. There is no 
standard biological clock. The time-sense of an amoeba 
(if it may be supposed to have any) in its intermittent 
protoplasmic protrusions, or of the May-fly in its swift 
nuptial flight, or that of a dog, now leaping in joyous 
motion at its master's call, now waiting in exemplary pa- 
tience on the door-mat, or that of the ruminant cow slowly 
chewing the cud under a tree — the time-rate throughout 
the animal world is indeterminate and not to be mea- 
sured by the ticking of our clocks. Moreover, we are 
always changing our personal rate of living; the mind of 
man is not bound in its thinking by any fixed standard of 



54 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

time. Some moments will seem long as hours; some 
hours pass all too quickly for us. Personal consciousness 
carries within it no standard time.^ 

Now, if we scrutinize closely this variability of the per- 
sonal time-rate, we may gain some hint of what the 
meaning of duration may really be; for these ever-chang- 
ing time-feelings of ours are not at all like the arrangements 
of points in space as we perceive them; nor are they a 
placing of our states of mind side by side together, as 
we might so many objects in a room. Rather we are 
aware of them as changes in the states themselves, one feel- 
ing blending with another, one thought interfusing and 
lending a different complexion to another. These inner 
changes in the successions of our mental life are marked 
and determined by differences of intensities in our feel- 
ings and transitions of characters in our ideas. Our men- 
tal states differ and our time-rates vary with them accord- 
ing to the interest they may excite, the attention which 
they stimulate, the absorption more or less of our thought 
in them. Often we forget time. We have been uncon- 
scious of its flight; we have not heard the striking of the 
clock; we have been living within ourselves the timeless 
Ufe. Thus a public speaker will become oblivious of the 
length of time he has been speaking, while his audience 
may have become increasingly conscious of the length of 
it. We may, indeed, retain a certain subconscious sense 
of the lapse of time in hours of intense mental abstrac- 
tion; in many instances it seems as though the physical 
mechanism were keeping a record of the passing moments 
while the mind in the intensity of its thinking ignores 
them. Habit may give to the trained speaker the faculty 
of setting for himself, as it were, an internal alarm-clock, 
so that he may leave out of mind all thought of the length 

1 So Mr. Bradley holds that there may be any number of time-series. It 
is not necessarily any one succession. There may be also different directions 
of time-series. — (.Appearance and Reality, pp. 210 seq.) 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 55 

of his discourse, confident that his physiological alarm- 
clock will strike and awaken him to the situation when he 
ought to stop. This, however, would seem to be a too 
exceptional oratorical gift. In our dreams we are usually 
aware of rapidly changing mental scenes, and of events 
and situations often abruptly passing into one another, 
which actually could occur only at separate intervals or 
after prolonged periods; yet they all come and go in a 
momentary transition between sleeping and waking. In 
such dreaming a sense of duration may be felt, but no 
time-measures are taken. Now, such seeming indepen- 
dences of clock time — this conscious flowing of our life in 
a timeless sense of it — ^is enough to raise again the same 
question, which we find meeting us at every turn in the 
way in which we have come to be what we are; what is 
this inner relation of our mental states? 

How is it that we know ourselves by these differences 
from measurable things? Is there an intelligible distinc- 
tion between an inner sense of duration and a perception 
of measured intervals of time? If we stand by the sea 
it is a simple thing to measure by the marks on the shore 
the rising and ebbing of the tide; as we sail over the wind- 
swept surface we may count the succession of the break- 
ing waves; but suppose an organism possessed of intelli- 
gence submerged far from the shore beneath the surface, 
swinging to the turn of the ocean tide, and moving with 
its rhythmic motion, yet having no means, like the marks 
on the shore, to determine the tidal periods or any per- 
ception of the passing waves; such an intelligence might 
acquire some sense of duration, but without distinction 
of time intervals. It might have a rhythmic feeling, per- 
haps, of motion, a certain vague consciousness of succes- 
sive states, but without a sense of clock time. That re- 
quires relations to outward objects by which it can be 
determined; for its acquisition vibrations only, mere 
strains and stresses in a perfect fluid would not be enough. 



56 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

Thus, it may be said, a sense of the duration of mental 
states may be mentally possessed, although such experi- 
ences be with difficulty abstracted from that measured 
knowledge of time which has been gained by the com- 
bination of the sense of duration and extension in our 
actual experience. So the time-sense and the space-sense, 
though the former, as Bergson contests, is not to be con- 
fused with the latter, may be conditions each for the 
other. It is idle, however, to attempt to catch in any 
definition the elusive sense of time. No one metaphysi- 
cian has ever succeeded in telling another what time is. 
The schoolmen attempted to envisage eternity by imagin- 
ing it as an immovable rock in the midst of a flowing stream 
— the future ever flowing toward it, the present break- 
ing at its foot, the past receding always — itself the same 
in the midst of the years. The mystics, casting all visible 
imagery aside in their moments of transcendent vision, 
could speak of themselves, as did Thomas Erskine of Lin- 
lathen, as having been in eternity and out of it in ten min- 
utes. In eternity, out of it; independent of the passing 
moments, yet dependent upon the passing day; seeing 
the things that are temporal, yet looking at the things 
that are eternal — such is the paradox of our experience. 
Who shall tell us what other intelligences, living in star- 
systems the motions of which are not set to our sun- 
dials, might declare concerning their seasons, what time 
is to them, what to them eternity may mean ? What for 
all intelUgences is eternity? This paradox of time and 
eternity in our human experience has in it hidden truth. 
These "flashings of everlastingness " are momentary re- 
vealings of something of abiding worth — a reality that 
cannot be assayed in the balances of our temporal succes- 
sions. As we make our sense of time more or less — mak- 
ing and changing our own rate of living — we seem, indeed, 
to be in this world of things temporal, but not of it. 
In St. Augustine's works the sense of space and time 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 57 

as possessed by us, while we ourselves belong to the non- 
spatial and the eternal, found frequent and unequalled 
expression. More than any of the Alexandrian Plato- 
nists or the Christian mystics, his words reach the utmost 
limits of intelHgible expression of the inner Hfe as existing 
in an eternal order of being — the immediate feeling of 
being ourselves something other than the temporal in the 
midst of the things that are seen and temporal. Of our 
personal relation to space he says: "What place is there 
within me, whither my God can come ? . . . I would not 
exist at all, unless Thou wert already within me. Thou 
wast never a place, and yet we have receded from Thee; 
we have drawn near to Thee, and yet Thou wast never a 
place. . . . The bodily creature can be changed by times 
and places, say from east to west. That thing is not 
moved through space which is not extended through 
space. . . . The soul is not considered to move in space, 
except it be held to be a body." — {De Genesi ad litter am, 
viii, 39 : 43.) His insight into our consciousness of time 
finds expression in such words as these: "Thou, O God, 
precedest all past times by the height of Thine ever-pres- 
ent Eternity; and Thou exceedest all future times, since 
these are future and, once they have come, will be past 
times. . . . Thy years neither come nor go; but these 
our years both come and go, that so they may all come. 
All Thy years abide together, because they abide . . . 
but these our years will all be only when they have ceased 
to be. Thy years are but one day, and this Thy day is 
not every day but to-day. This Thy to-day is Eternity. 
Who shall hold man's vain heart and fix it, so that it may 
for a little abide, and may for a little grasp the splendor 
of ever-abiding Eternity, and may compare it with the 
never-abiding times, and may thus see how Eternity is 
not comparable with them?" — {Conf.,xi, 13 : 2.) "True 
Eternity is present where there is nothing of time." — 
{Tract, in Joann. Evang., xxxiii, 9.) He can speak of mo- 



58 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

ments in which we "touch slightly, by an impulse of all our 
heart" that which is Eternal, and he can say: "If that 
our touch by our rapidly passing thought of the Eternal 
Wisdom which abideth above all things . . . were to be 
continued ... so that Eternal Life would be like that 
moment of intelligence — would not that be the meaning 
of the words 'enter thou into the joy of thy Lord'?" ^ 

Augustine's sense of duration, which was derived from 
his religious experience, his mystical feeling of eternity, 
may be compared with Bergson's idea of duration, which 
is the result of his keen analysis of the sense of space and 
time. To him, as to Augustine, there is a constant differ- 
ence between duration and clock time. Bergson dis- 
tinguishes between "the possible conceptions of time, the 
one free from all alloy, the other surreptitiously bringing 
in the idea of space." The consciousness of pure duration 
he compares to our state when "we recall the notes of a 
tune, melting, so to speak, in one another." "Pure du- 
ration is the form which the succession of our conscious 
states assumes when our ego lets itself live, when it re- 
frains from separating the present state from its former 
states. . . . Thus, within our ego, there is succession with- 
out mutual externality; outside the ego, in pure space, 
mutual externaHty without succession. . . ." "There is 
a real space, without duration, in which objects appear 
and disappear simultaneously with our states of con- 
sciousness. There is a real duration, the heterogeneous 
moments of which permeate one another. "^ 

One may accept Bergson's view of duration, and his clarify- 
ing the immediate experience of living in time from confusion 

^Conf., ix, 19 : 2, 3. See Baron von Hiigel, Eternal Life, pp. 87-90. 

* Time and Free Will, p. 108 /. Aquinas conceived of an intermediate 
mode of existence between the temporal and the eternal, which he called 
Mimm, and which participates in each. Baron F. von Hiigel regards this 
Mvum as an interesting groping after Bergson's idea of duration, " the suc- 
cession of which is never all change, since its constituents, in varying degrees, 
overlap and interpret each other." — {Ibid., p. 106.) 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 59 

with the idea of space, as a positive contribution to philosophic 
thought; but we hesitate to accept his estimate of the function 
of intellect in his theory of knowledge. The acuteness of his 
intellectual analysis of consciousness itself witnesses to a higher 
efl&ciency of the intellect in the process of knowing ourselves 
than he accords to it. While it is true, as he affirms, that all 
the purely biological or physical moulds crack when we seek to 
fit into them the entire contents of consciousness; it is also the 
fact that the stream of personal life, even at its fullest, does 
have banks, and though at times it seems to overflow all limi- 
tations, it is nevertheless held within bounds to its natural 
course. The forms of thought, within which we must think, 
if we think at all, the categories of the understanding, remain; 
push them back as far as we may, our conceptions can never 
overleap their limitations. The banks are not the stream, nor 
the fountains from which it springs; the forms within which 
the conscious thought is held are not the personal life, nor its 
upland sources and perpetual springs; logic is the determination 
and law of its flowing. We have to find its direction, and to 
measure its course as an observer from the banks. 

3. We have further to avail ourselves of all possible 
psychological means to determine what is involved in the 
experience of ourselves as personal units. We are integers, 
whole numbers to ourselves. Living is a process of in- 
tegration. The more intensive the living the stronger is 
the sense of the wholeness of life. This fundamental ex- 
perience of unity is to be held fast in the interpretation of 
personality. No theory of personality can be true which 
departs from this fact given primarily in experience of 
the basic unity of being. The personal, I, is the constant 
of which the verbs are predicates — I think, I feel, I act. 
The person may be described as that to which all the con- 
tents of consciousness are referred. This vital unity is 
not to be compared with a mechanical fusion or a chemical 
compounding of separate elements. In self-conscious ac- 
tion the impulses transmitted from nerve conductors, the 
experiences of the past which are latent in memory, the 



6o THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

cerebral centres that are stimulated, and the mental proc- 
esses that are started, all are grasped in a single deter- 
mination, concentrated in a dominant thought, and di- 
rected as one personal act toward a definite end. Of this 
personal unity it may be said that it grew rather than 
that it was made. It did not spring up all at once out of 
nothing on the earth. We have already observed that a 
principle of organic control appeared in the earliest be- 
ginnings of life; it may be discerned even in the behavior 
of unicellular organisms in a microscopic field. Doubt- 
less we shall learn more in time of the chemical and me- 
chanical stresses and tropisms of protoplasmic matter, 
but, as our knowledge of vital reactions grows, the pri- 
mary fact does not diminish in meaning that the least pro- 
tozoa act as whole organisms in response to vital stimuli, 
and not as a mere conglomerate mass of particles without 
organic co-ordination, although that at first may exist in 
but slight degree. This principle of unified action for an 
organic end and welfare, once fairly gained in nature, shall 
never be lost. The vital law of the control of the whole 
throughout the parts is henceforth never to be given up, 
however specialized the parts shall become and intricate 
their connections may be. This fundamental principle 
of organic behavior is as primal and as universal in the 
realm of life as the law of gravitation throughout the 
realm of matter. The natural tendency to bring the parts 
into subjection to the ends of the whole organism mani- 
fests itself in three main directions — progressive speciali- 
zation of organs for the maintenance of life; more respon- 
sive correlations between developed organs; and, upon 
this basis, more diversified and useful functions of body 
for the welfare of the organism as a whole. 

The highest power of organic control is realized in 
man's ability to live and to act with all his mind, and all 
his heart, and all his strength. This is our apprehension 
of personal unity as manifested in action. In the per- 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 6i 

sonal use of this power of organic control we see fulfilled 
at length the part which animal acquisitions and instincts 
have played for the ends of life; but more than these, 
superseding the animal instinctive means of preparation 
for future needs and the survival of the species, the per- 
sonal power of living for organic ends has become a facility 
of conscious adaptations to individual needs and of pur- 
poseful action, not merely responsive in an automatic 
way to immediate situations, but also directed to ideal 
ends to be followed into the far-off years. 

Certain aims and issues of organic control the human 
shares with the animal life before it. It aims to keep its 
own wholeness, to maintain its specific form of being. It 
shares also to some extent that virtue of self-healing and 
repair which characterizes life in general. But there is 
one conspicuous aspect in which man's power of self-con- 
trol is unique and transcendent: a man can consciously 
and with forethought lay down his life. This is more 
than an instinctive act, as of a bird fluttering around its 
nest to protect its young; nor is it merely that higher 
animal fidelity which sometimes seems so human, as when 
a dog leaps into peril following its master perhaps to 
death. When the Son of man said: "I have right to lay 
down my life" (John lo : 18, margin), he uttered a word 
transcending any natural impulse merely of sacrifice. By 
that human declaration of right, a diviner mastery over 
life and death is affirmed — the moral power of self-devo- 
tion to an end beyond self, and the supreme personal 
right of sacrifice. 

Nor is this new commandment of love rendered any 
the less humanly transcendent by the fact that, when it 
is announced by the Son of man, it is seen to fulfil all the 
law and prophets of life before it. It comes not to de- 
stroy but to fulfil the earliest adumbrations of it in the 
co-operation of the primitive colonies of separate cells, 
in the social instincts of the more advanced species, and 



62 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

in the anticipation of it in the mother instinct of self- 
forgetfulness, which is the most human thing in the animal 
world. These were not yet made perfect; these all led 
on to "a more excellent way"; the end of God's ways is 
not reached until the greater love is come, in which a 
man lays down his Hfe for his friend. On the cross the 
divine right of the Son of man to lay down his life for the 
world is witnessed in his finished work of obedience unto 
death. 

The full import of this reflection is not grasped unless 
we observe that the new way of sacrificial Hfe does not 
enter as a cross-road the path of natural life which we are 
following; it is a continuation of it up to another level. 
It carries the previous way of life beyond and above what 
seemed to be its natural termination. Just where nature's 
ways seemed to meet and end, this new divinely human 
way of life begins; and in a direction which knows no 
bounds. As the last meaning of the inorganic is that it 
leads into the vital, the final significance of the animal is 
its fulfilment in the human. 

We are now prepared to proceed to a closer introspec- 
tion of the contents and meaning of personal conscious- 
ness. Along this further inquiry we must still carry our 
physiology with us, eager to trace to the finest ends the 
connections between the physical and psychical, and ready 
to avail ourselves of any cross-hghts that experimental 
psychology may throw upon introspective search for the 
meaning of our personal being and destiny. 

I 

Sense-Perception 

"We enter this section of our subject at the point where 
we meet the question concerning the nature of sense- 
perception. 

I. It is a crude way of representing the perception of 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 6$ 

an object to regard it as an image impressed on some 
cerebral cell, like a photograph left on a sensitive plate. 
It is a visual image, but it is more than the form of an 
outward object mirrored in the retina of the eye; for a 
perception is also our act; we are both instrument and 
operator. What we see not only represents the object 
in space, but also it is an experience in time of our per- 
ceptive being. It is something in nature acting on us, 
and also something of us manifesting its energy. More- 
over, this sense-perception, seemingly so passive, is a form 
of energy, becoming kinetic, if transmitted into muscular 
motion, or being potential when stored up as memory. 
The initial of a sense-perception is some impact from with- 
out; a wave of air or vibration of the ether of space breaks 
upon the ear or eye, and instantly — we know not how — 
its energy is transformed into other modes of motion from 
cell to cell of nerve conductors; it impinges upon some 
central area, from whence it may be carried outward and 
further transformed into some bodily motion, setting stiU 
other forces of nature into action; while also in some 
manner, which none can discern, it occasions or is accom- 
panied by our consciousness of something seen, or heard, 
and done. All this is action; there is no dead wire here. 
A still landscape, so far from being a mere picture in an 
observer's eye, or remaining a quiet contemplation in his 
afterthought, is actually in his perception of it a per- 
fection of harmonized motions of radiant energies touch- 
ing the retina, of marvellously intricate adjustments of 
protoplasmic molecules, of swift impulsions running to 
and fro, and of we know not what selective associations 
and mental transformers. As Mozely finely has said: 
"Nature, in the very act of laboring as a machine, sleeps 
as a picture." The picture of a quiet landscape in the 
evening light is the harmony and peace of innumerable 
activities of nature without us and within us. Nor is 
this all; for the observer's attention may hold a land- 



64 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

scape clear and still in the mind's eye, or as quickly let 
it vanish and another motion-picture take its place. 
And this attention, focussing and framing every object of 
conscious perception, is itself so much energy; intense 
attention is itself intense action. Things are in relation 
to us only as we relate them to one another. The relating 
them is our act. Sense-perception, as the physiologists 
rightly tell us, furnishes the raw material for subsequent 
mental construction; but is it to be accounted for merely 
as a complex series of nervous contacts and currents? 
Moreover, while the act of perceiving brings us into im- 
mediate contact with nature, does it leave us bound to 
the material world? In the act of perceiving is nerve 
contact with nature merely the completion of a circle, 
or is it the beginning, also, of something further in us? 
Here likewise the old question of the philosopher rises 
before the facts of the physiologist, and we must look to 
the end. 

The physiological fact, so far as it has yet been scien- 
tifically determined, neither excludes the question of in- 
terpretation nor renders the answer. A sense-perception 
is not a full period, it is an interrogation-point for psy- 
chology. Nothing can be more short-sighted or pre- 
sumptuous than for experimental psychologists to take it 
for granted that they have reached the end of self-knowl- 
edge when they have only reached the end of their labora- 
tory tether. There are outlying aspects of sense-percep- 
tion which open the whole field of psychic inquiry. 
Other factors which lie beyond physiological determina- 
tion, have to be admitted to fill up the gaps between the 
incidence of the rays that fall on the retina and the men- 
tal image perceived. The continuity of the process from 
the peripheral sensation along the optic nerve to the optic 
cerebral area and into the consciousness of the outward 
world as perceived must be admitted; but the molecular 
motions of the cerebral cells are not the perceptive con- 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 65 

tents of consciousness, nor can the functioning of the 
brain be identified offhand with the appearance of the 
perceived object in the mind. A measurable quantity of 
energy goes into the eye as light, and it comes out as an 
immeasurable perception of an object; what and how is 
the transformation in consciousness made ? ^ 

2. A further interesting inquiry is presented by the 
interval of time that is found to occur during the con- 
version of an afferent current through the cerebral cen- 
tres into an efferent current terminating in a muscular 
response. Some portion of this interval is required for 
the transforming action of the cerebral portion of the 
sensori-motor mechanism. What control is exercised at 
the central station? How does it happen that several 
afferent currents are inhibited, and one selected in respon- 
sive motion ? What directs the central switchboard ? 
Among the many clamorous, conflicting, persistent calls 
which come up from all over the bodily organism to the 
central station, what selective power lets one have the 
right of way, and holds up or sidetracks the others? 
Here, it is true, many are called and few are chosen; 
among all these upcoming sensations what indwelling 
power does the choosing? Science does not know a 
divinity outside the system to direct the operation of it. 
What factor, then, is it inside the whole physiological 

1 "The relating process as itself content of the perceptive process (a and 
b) must be included in the physical process; but how?" — (Biisse, L., Geist 
und Korper, pp. 209 seq.) So also R. S. Woodruff: "The attempt to de- 
scribe percept-quaUties as syntheses of sensory qualities is hypothetical in 
the second degree. The presence of the required images is hypothetical, and 
no less hypothetical is the power of the images, if present, by combining with 
the sensations to produce a percept. They might fuse, no doubt. But is 
the feeUng together of clanging noise and visual picture fully eqmvalent 
to the perception of a ringing car bell?" ... **A percept is not a syn- 
thesis of sensation and image; it is a reaction to the sensation. It is not a 
motor-reaction, but a mental reaction." — {Journal of Philosophical Psy- 
chology, IV, 1909, p. 173.) Similarly Wimdt: "Every perception brings in 
a new property not as yet contained in its elements, the form of the ordering 
of the elements," — {System der Phil., I, p. 5^5-) 



66 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

system that secures this "effective consciousness," which 
maintains its control in the swift yet orderly procession 
moment after moment of our mental perceptions? 

This seeming dualism of the action of body and mind 
in the unified process of sense-perception compels us to 
look further, if we would gain the slightest intelUgible 
apprehension of its occurrence. There must be some 
reason in it and for it; apparent dualism cannot be a final 
contradiction of experience; for unity, as we have ob- 
served, is a primal reality of personal being in our con- 
scious sense of it, and we must therefore reasonably hold 
fast the postulate that all facts of experience in some way 
shall prove consistent with the integrity of personal being. 

We may take the next step in our inquiry concerning 
the growth of mind, as we consider the identification of 
percepts and the beginning of memory. 

II 

Beginnings of Memory 

An exercise of mind distinct from, yet closely related 
to sense-perception appears in the act of identifying two 
or more perceptions. This involves some degree of com- 
parison and discrimination. 

If we suppose an organism so limited in its movement 
that it could perceive but a single fixed object; or if we 
imagine an eye so placed at a point of space that its field 
of vision would always be filled with one star, which in 
turn should always shine with the same intensity; then 
an absolute arrest of intelligence might ensue; constant 
uniformity of response to one unvarying stimulation would 
inhibit the growth of intelligent perception. The fatigue 
of the same perpetual stimulus might cause degeneration 
and eventually the utter loss of reason. We know how 
a mind possessed with one idea may become a lost mind. 

Rational life requires for its exercise and increase a sue- 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 67 

cession of perceptions. Our physiological structure, as 
we have seen, has been built up on the ground-plan of 
two neurones, and the human child arrives at birth fitted 
out with sense-receptors, responsive to an endless variety 
of calls from the world into which it comes. Something 
more also is given it in preparation for its individual 
experience. It has power not only to receive successive 
stimulations, but the further distinctive ability to learn 
to discriminate among these impressions, to compare them 
with one another, and in so doing to hold several of them 
together in one conscious grasp of a manifold of sense- 
perception. This is something quite different from a per- 
ception of a succession of objects flying across the field 
of vision, as one may look from a window of a fast express 
and see, without distinguishing, passing trees. Successive 
perceptions in this mental act are held long enough in 
mind to identify lines and to notice differences; hence 
the child learns in time to give names to things, as Adam 
was distinguished from all the animals in the garden by 
giving names to them all. This identification of per- 
cepts involves likewise power to apprehend a series of 
objects as a connected whole. This is obviously an 
identifying act that goes beyond the simpler processes of 
nerve-reflexes; some other factor at this point is the de- 
termining influence in the development of mind. Some 
capacity of analysis and synthesis has begun to work in 
connection with the growing brain; henceforth a power 
of selective inteUigence shall be dominant in Hfe. Biology 
must make room for its value and power; having once 
entered into life, nothing can put it out again. This brings 
us directly to the consideration of memory. We will 
enter this field, as we have the preceding inquiries, from 
the biological side. 



68 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

III 

The Physiological Elements oj Memory-Images 

Physiological psychology has made of late years sev- 
eral contributions of value to the natural history of mem- 
ory. One is the supposition of a possible modification of 
the cerebral areas through a delay in motor-responses to 
some stimuH. It is said that from a past experience an 
attitude of expectation may have been acquired. From 
something that has affected us we are thrown into a cer- 
tain state of expectation of something that may affect 
us. Thus a stimulus is carried over from something done 
to something that may occur; and this is useful for the 
preservation or betterment of life. The utility increases 
as exposures of an animal to hostile movements are mul- 
tiplied; consequently there results a storing up of re- 
peated stimuli, or danger-signals, in a habit of motor- 
responses, which put the animal quickly on its defense. 
This sensori-motor habit becomes an important factor in 
the selective survival of the species. There is gained also 
an inherited determinant and function of memory. The 
primary use of something like that which we recognize 
in ourselves as a memory-image, we surmise, was to carry 
the organism beyond the limits of the immediate environ- 
ment, and to assist it in foreseeing and providing for the 
future. It was a means of remote adaptation.^ Some 
idea oi its possible origin may be conceived in this way: 
if the stimuli and resp'onsivfe motions of an animal should 
follow each other rapidly, when immediate action is neces- 
sary for its preservation, the result would be the setting 
up of a series of automatic repetitions of movements 
without any conscious aid or intervention. Automatism 
might then be regarded as a sufficient scientific account 
of the resultant animal behavior. But suppose the re- 

* Washburn, M. F., Mhid in Animals, p. 273. 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 69 

action to the stimulus to be delayed, as when a single 
stimulus only slightly innervates the motor apparatus; 
and suppose also that no urgency of life requires immedi- 
ate response, as when an animal sees an object approach- 
ing from a distance without sense of immediate peril, or 
after perceiving its prey must wait in suspended anima- 
tion before leaping to seize it. During this interval the 
restrained nerve-energy prepared for the next action may 
to some degree innervate the mechanism for the motion 
to be let loose, while some of the energy may overflow into 
the sensory centres, which the anticipated stimulus will 
stir to full activity. The result of this waiting period of 
restrained innervation, it is said, may be an "idea, or 
image, rather vague, of the stimulus waited for. " ^ 

Another suggestion that may help out the attempt to 
conceive of the origin of the memory-image from the 
physiological side is the so-called "movement idea." 
A perception is gained by a movement of a sense-organ, 
as the hand over an object; and the more varied the 
power of an animal to receive sensations through move- 
ments, the wider will be the range of its sensory discrimi- 
nations, and the larger the number of its definite percep- 
tions of objects. A movement idea is supposed to be 
"the revival through central excitation of the sensations, 
visual, tactile, kinaesthetic, originally produced by the 
performance of the movement itself." 

Before proceeding, however, to determine the processes 
involved in memory, we should return and examine more 
closely the nature of sense-perception in its relation to 
the memory-image. Our memories are images of images; 
they reproduce our perceptions; and our perceptions also 
are not pure perceptions, but memory-images also enter 
into them, giving to them form and color. The picture 
which at any moment you may have in your eye is not 
merely the effect of the rays of light at that moment 

^ Ibid., p. 274. 



70 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

touching the retina of your eye; it is also interfused with 
past impressions quickly gathering from within to meet 
and blend themselves with the scene opening on your 
vision. At any moment of perception the mental imagery 
is a composite pattern, woven of many threads and colors, 
never the same in its swift succession and evanescent hues. 
Lost far beyond recall are the first pure perceptions of 
childhood, unformed by experience, uncolored by reflec- 
tion. We see things in the present through our past, far 
more than we may think. A photograph, for example, 
is one thing to the eye of a stranger; it is a different thing 
to one who has seen and loved the face. In present 
vision there Hngers something of the light of other days. 
An artist perceives more in a landscape or in a human 
form and face than others see, not merely because his eye 
may be keener than theirs, but because behind the retina 
of his eye an artistic power and habit of perception have 
been acquired; memories of years of training and of 
studious hours before nature's revelation and in art's 
interpretation are present and blend with his perception; 
in this inner light he sees. Hence it is that often in the 
effort to see things as they are we look again and again, 
making the effort to rid ourselves of past impressions that 
we may make no error in our observation. Experimenters 
have to discount the personal error of the observer. Now 
these overlappings and shadowings of perceptions and 
memories, which complicate the analysis of the psychol- 
ogists, are not to be put aside in any adequate theory of 
human knowledge. To account for them physiologically 
would require an additional refinement of the supposed 
automatic adjustments of movements, a far more intricate 
complication of the already overtaxed mechanism of ner- 
vous reflexes in the mechanistic explanation of personal Hf e.^ 

^ Bergson's keen analysis of perception and memory is a notable contri- 
bution to the issue between materialism and spiritual vitalism, which is 
of value irrespective of his general philosophy. 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 71 

Looked at from a purely physiological point of view 
sense-perception itself presents inexplicable problems in 
the present state of our knowledge. A critical inspection 
of the phenomena of binocular vision, for example, dis- 
closes some phenomena which imply something beyond 
any known forms of mechanical adjustment and action. 
Several observers, notably Mr. Sherrington, have called 
attention to the following inquiries. 

It is a question how and where the images in two op- 
tical instruments, such as the eyes, are fused in one men- 
tal perception — how two neural systems of reception and 
communication of these two optical images are unified in 
our consciousness of one image. This is not the general 
difficulty of imagining how a mental representation of an 
outward object may be occasioned; it is the more specific 
difficulty of conceiving how a machine constructed as an 
optical instrument can of its own motion produce a re- 
sult entirely different from that of any optical instrument. 
Moreover, besides this metaphysical puzzle, a strictly 
mechanical objection to the mechanical theory is brought 
out by Mr. Sherrington's experiments on binocular vision. 
In order to determine the mechanism of vision he devised 
several ingenious experiments with flickering lights, and 
lights of varying degrees of intensity. Each eye receives 
upon its separate retina the rays of light, and has its 
separate path of nervous conduction to the optical area 
of the cerebrum. So far the mechanism seems quite like 
that of an ordinary field-glass. But the field-glass only 
serves to concentrate and carry a few more stimulations 
of light-rays to our optic nerves; how is this process con- 
tinued and the separate optical images fused in our per- 
ceptions? This again might seem a simple matter me- 
chanically if the two images were thrown together upon 
a common field, point corresponding to point, line co- 
inciding with fine in one optical image; but our internal 
field-glass is not so constructed. Vision with us has 



72 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

other ends to fulfil than simply to produce a sharply out- 
lined mental photograph. The human optical apparatus 
is itself but part of a larger system of vital activities and 
organic preservation. It belongs to and serves a whole 
defensive and offensive organization in the struggle of 
animal existence. It has been fashioned and adapted to 
organic demands in the midst of contending forces. Life 
is intensely on its guard in vision. Not only through the 
eye is intelligence to be signalled to the brain of what- 
ever may appear within the range of sight, but also the 
forces of the entire body are to be summoned for what- 
ever action, immediate or expectant, may be required; 
and then these forces are to be directed to definite ends 
through the activity of the organs of vision. In the animal 
economy vision is thus not only the searching sight of the 
watchman aloft; it becomes also the call to the officer on 
the bridge to press the button, or to issue the word of 
command that shall swing the helm, or cause the engineer 
to alter the motor-power according to the moment's de- 
mand. This double function of vision in serving organic 
needs^ — ^its receptive capacity and its relation to motor- 
responses — differentiates it at once from an optical in- 
strument, and renders the study of its mechanism and 
uses far more intricate and obscure than a determination 
merely of its optical construction. Mr. Sherrington's 
observations relating to this subject are too technical 
to be rendered easily intelHgible in a descriptive summary 
of them, but some results which he reached may be 
given as follows: 

I. His experiments indicate that the single visual image 
which we perceive is not unified physiologically prior to 
the mental act of perception, but is the product of a 
further psychical proceeding. The nervous reactions that 
are initiated at twin points on the retina of each eye 
are not fused early in the retino-cerebral nerve-chain to 
enter mechanisms common to both. On the contrary, 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 73 

"only after the sensations initiated from right and left 
'corresponding points' have been elaborated, and have 
reached a dignity and definiteness well amenable to in- 
trospection, does interference between the reactions of 
two (left and right) eye-systems occur. The binocular 
sensation attained seems combined from right and left 
uniocular sensations elaborated independently " (pp. 357- 

381). 

2. There does not appear to be, according to these ex- 
periments, any discernible traces of interference or fusion 
of the nerve functioning of the sub-perceptual events pre- 
vious to the point or moment of the consciously unified 
sense-perception; on the contrary, two distinct sensations 
are conjoined and elaborated in the final perceptual image. 
The images of a flickering light in the left eye and the right 
eye, when viewed singly, do not appear to differ in our 
sense of them. "It is much as though, of the left and right 
lantern images, each were seen by one of two observers, 
with similar vision, and as though the minds of the two 
observers were combined to a single mind " (p. 380). How, 
then, are these two minds connected and their observa- 
tions combined? The ultimate problem of perception is 
not optical but mental — not fusion of sensation, but men- 
tal integration. Moreover, binocular vision is not the 
result of an addition of two similar degrees of brightness, 
or the increase of two nerve-currents flowing together in a 
common path. It is not, then, mathematically to be ex- 
plained. "The binocular result most often does not per- 
ceptually differ from either of its two coequal com- 
ponents" (p. 380). Mr. Sherrington sums up the results 
of his experimentation in this sentence: "Our experi- 
ments show, therefore, that during binocular regard of an 
objective image each uniocular mechanism develops in- 
dependently a sensual image of considerable completeness. 
The singleness of the binocular perception results from 
union of these elaborated uniocular sensations. The 



74 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

singleness is, therefore, the product of a synthesis that 
works with already elaborated sensations contempora- 
neously proceeding" (p. 382). The elaboration of each of 
these sensations, as we have already noticed, is the initial 
problem; another outlying problem is reached at the end 
of this physiological chapter. How is the synthesis of 
these sensations in the one resulting perception to be 
apprehended ? 

3. Mr. Sherrington finds a further difficulty in the way 
of a purely physiological explanation: the co-ordinating 
mechanism of a binocular vision does not lead directly to 
"some supposed nodal cortical" point with a hypothetical 
"sensual Deus ex machinaJ' On the contrary, "the con- 
fluence of conductors from the two retinae to the same 
cortical field, though not uniting their retinal impressions, 
gives them access to a common efferent path which both 
must use" (p. 385). There is thus a "convergence of 
afferent paths leading to a motor-synthesis, but not, or 
only remotely, to sensual. Seen in this light, the gulf be- 
tween sensation and movement looms up even wider than 
was allowed for," when Mr, Sherrington began his ex- 
periments on flickering lights (p. 386). Similarly, Meyer 
says: "Certainly the simple diagrams of the retinal rela- 
tion which have hitherto contented us are quite inade- 
quate. They may account for all motor-reflexes, but they 
cannot account for all binocular conscious processes." 
These observations invaHdate again the answer that more 
knowledge might enable us to reduce the psychic appear- 
ances to a physical basis, for they point the other way. 
We cite Mr. Sherrington's own conclusion from his ex- 
periments: "The cerebral seats of right-eye and left-eye 
visual images are thus shown to be separate. Conductive 
paths no doubt interconnect them, but are shown to be 
unnecessary for visual unification of two images. Here 
we seem to have, therefore, contemporaneity of itself suf- 
ficing for sensual synthesis, without necessarily any spatial 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 75 

fusion of the neural processes or mechanism involved, 
i. e., without spatial confluence to a unit apparatus." 
This is a very suggestive fact that the unifying of two 
retinal impressions is thus taken out of measurable space 
and shown to be an act requiring time; the synthesis is 
not dependent upon space contacts or confluence. Sher- 
rington adds the important reflection: "Pure conjunction 
in time without necessarily cerebral conjunction in space 
lies at the root of the problem of the unity of the mind" 
(p. 384). A fusion of sensations purely in time seems 
conceivable only as a psychic operation; so the increase 
of physiological knowledge of binocular vision leads away 
from the hjrpothesis of a fusion of chemical elements 
within a brain-area. The following warning of Sherring- 
ton is needed when one reads much recent psychological 
literature: "Hasty conclusions identifying things that 
closer introspection finds to differ, are the easy solutions 
into which a too eager physiological psychology may fall 
unawares." ^ 

It appears, then, that perceptions are not to be weighed 
as physical quantities, or measured as a series of states 
juxtaposed in space; they are moments of a process of 
living. The personal problem is not even stated when 
perceptions and memories are treated as so many fixed 
images and not apprehended as successive forms of in- 
telligent action. 

While our perceptions and memories are interfused in 
consciousness, and neither of these mental activities occurs 
without bringing with it something of the other, they have 
their distinctive marks and values. 

We are prepared now to consider further the nature 
of memory. We have already found a possible source of 

^ It is to be noted that this experimental differentiation between spatial 
and temporal fusion of sensations in perception faUs in very well with 
Bergson's analysis of perception and memory. See Matter and Memory, 
pp. 26 seq. 



76 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

memory as we have searched for the beginnings of the 
perceptive power of animal life. Both run back to a 
common vital origin. The foundations of memory are 
without doubt laid in some elementary properties of liv- 
ing matter. The congenital determination of instincts, 
the formation of habits, and the increasing articulation 
of the nervous system, with consequent gain of capacity 
for purposive use of all the members of the body, extend 
the range and effective exercise of memory. To what ex- 
tent, if any, in the higher animals memory has been car- 
ried beyond that of immediate association and identifica- 
tion of objects which have been more than once perceived, 
together with some preperceptive sense of their possible 
sequences — this is a matter of conjectural interest for 
the student of comparative psychology.^ In man thi? 
power of recalling and using the past for present ends and 
prospective values of life has reached its climax; and with 
it there has been acquired a seeming reversion of it, the 
power, also, of forgetting. We can lose our memories, 
but not so easily our instincts. We do not know whether 
animals have power to forget; but we can forget, and this 
abiHty to let things go from us, as well as to learn, is a 
part of our higher capacity for education and a means 
of ever-progressive intelligence. AbiHty to forget the 
things which are behind, is an element of great value in 
the mental and moral endowment of man. Progress 
would be well-nigh impossible without it. This is to a 
considerable extent a power subject to choice, a voluntary 
control over our memories. But just this acquisition of 
the ability not to remember has been altogether too much 
overlooked in current physiological theories of memory; 
and this signal mark of personal control over past experi- 
ence must be recognized in any adequate interpretation of 
human life. Physiological researches undoubtedly carry 

^ The physiological process of itself would not necessarily imply conscious 
memory. See Loeb, The Dynamics of Living Matter, p. 6. 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 77 

us a considerable and very interesting way in the study 
of memory, but just when these investigations are pushed 
to the extreme of possible knowledge we need the caution 
against jumping to hasty conclusions as though we had 
reached the end of the whole matter. In the investiga- 
tion of memory a bridge of unsupported assumptions 
should not be trusted as a real connection between the 
two sides of our consciousness. Physiological psychology 
has need to be most humble just where it is most success- 
ful. 

Distinctive characteristics, such as the following, are 
to be recognized in the memory processes, and they 
should not be overlooked in their possible significance. 

The physiological conditions have become further dif- 
ferentiated from those involved in immediate perception. 

1. A memory may be stimulated by a perception of 
some outward object; another factor, however, comes 
into play to constitute a memory — the coincidence with 
it in consciousness of another percept which has already 
been received, A memory is a meeting of two images 
and their correlation — an immediate perception or image 
and some other percept or image. 

2. Moreover, memory is not an action wholly depen- 
dent upon stimulus from without through some sense-per- 
ception. Even if the train be started from without, it 
runs on under its own power; we shut our eyes and let 
memories pass before us one after another. The memory 
movement is a movement within consciousness, during 
which the outward world of the senses may fade and be 
lost to consciousness. 

3. Besides this, the direct action of a perception and 
memory upon the physiological mechanism is character- 
istically divergent. In and through perception a stimulus 
is first felt at a peripheral point (or at some bodily point) 
of sensation. There is a transmission of the induced 
nervous current to the central system, and its conversion 



78 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

into an outgoing stimulus (if not otherwise inhibited), 
and its direction along an efferent nerve- tract ending 
in a motor-reaction. In memorizing, the sensori-motor 
mechanism may be set vibrating, as in the slight action 
of the lips when one is recalling a line, or in other sup- 
pressed muscular motions; but the muscular mechanisms, 
so far as they are affected, are touched from within, by 
the stimulus of a memory-image, not directly from with- 
out by an immediate sense-perception. There is thus a 
mental intervention — the projection of an idea — a re- 
presentation of a presentation — into the course of the 
sensori-motor sequences. A memory, however stimulated, 
takes its start from an already accomplished mental act, 
and is itself a synthesis of at least two percepts: one that 
has been and one that is. This synthesizing action is a 
factor to be accounted for as distinctive of every true 
memory. 

4. Furthermore, it may be that in perception the direct 
or main current of stimulated nerve-energy is from one 
end to the other of the sensori-motor mechanism through 
some central combining centre; and consciousness of it 
is occasioned, if at all, by its indirect conduction — its 
overflow, as it were, into consciousness. But there is a 
reversal of this in memory. Its first appearance is in 
consciousness; as a content or a succession of moments 
of consciousness its energy becomes operative; its over- 
flowing may be perceptible in some muscular motions or 
tension; or it may be voluntarily directed to some con- 
sciously intended action. The muscular action resulting 
from a memory is an induced current; memories, however 
awakened, become thought in reaction upon the physical 
mechanism, a reversing touch, as it were, of the mind upon 
its bodily condition. Both a perception and a memory 
may set the motor mechanism going; but the former does 
so directly, the other indirectly; in the one the physi- 
ological process is carried from end to end through the 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 79 

intermediate movement only of the mental elaboration of 
the visual image; in the other through that plus the ex- 
istence of another, a mental image previously formed, and 
the correlation of the two in the consequent motor-reaction. 
These several factors are involved in the process of recol- 
lection and its consequent influence upon one's action. 
When we abstract from memory its perceptive initiation 
and its physiological resonance, pure memory has, as its 
remaining character, an ideational aspect. It is by no 
means to be regarded as a weakened sensation, a washed- 
out perception. It will draw to itself other elements of 
consciousness, uniting with which it becomes prepotent, 
and gains range and power far beyond the limits of the 
original group of sense-perceptions from which it may 
have sprung. One of Bergson's striking remarks hits the 
core of the matter: "Most psychologists," he says, "see 
in pure memory only a weakened perception, an assembly 
of nascent sensations. Having thus effaced, to begin 
with, all difference in kind between sensation and memory, 
they are led by the logic of their hypothesis to materialize 
memory and to idealize sensation." ^ 

5. The distinctive significance of human memory ap- 
pears as we analyze further its contents and processes. 

To recollect is not a simple function; it is a succession 
and involution of three forms of activity, which intro- 
spectively may be distinguished and, to some extent, ex- 
perimentally verified: viz., an act of retention, of recall, 
and of discrimination. An image, which once entered the 
field of consciousness, and passed out of it, has in some 
manner been so retained in the organic possession that 
it may come back again into the field of consciousness. 
Its recall over the threshold of consciousness may be 
effected quite spontaneously either by a repetition of a 
similar sense-stimulus or the appearance of something in 
the mind that was once associated with it, the one drawing 

^ Matter and Memory, p. 179. 



8o THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

the other after it into recognition. Or it may be found 
and brought back by a direct effort of searching for it. 
But by none of these means could a past image have been 
recalled, unless it had been in some way first caught and 
held fast within reach of the mind that recalls it. Recall 
based on retention is a primary fact of the memory process 
to be accounted for. Physiologically we must search for 
the means of it in the higher central organs; there is no 
sign of voluntary recollection to be found anywhere along 
the sensory conductive paths. 

Besides retention and power of recall, the third char- 
acteristic of memory appears in the recognition of an 
object present in mind as related to some previous experi- 
ence. This is not merely a perception more or less gen- 
eral of resemblance or identity between two objects, both 
which may lie visibly before us; it is also a cognition of 
their relation to each other in time as well as in space — 
it is re-cognition. One revisits, for example, the scenes 
of his childhood and sees once more the gate, the yard, 
the house, where he lived many years ago. What he sees 
is simply the house and its surroundings; what he re- 
members is the home as once he knew it, the gate on 
which the children are swinging, the faces long unseen 
looking once more out of the windows — the light of other 
days is over all. It is the same, he says, that it used to 
be; yet what he sees is not the same scene that would be 
mirrored in the eyes of a passer-by. It is the home abid- 
ing in his heart that he sees, that quickens his pulse beat- 
ings, and brings tears to his eyes as he looks — and lives 
again in his past. 

Thus it may be said that memory has to do in time 
what perception does with objects in space; it puts to- 
gether realities that time has separated, and beholds them 
as a whole in one intuition. While perception affords an 
optically reduced presentation of a given situation, mem- 
ory gathers together different moments of experience as 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 8i 

a present field of consciousness. What is it in memory 
that does this? What personal power is this over ex- 
periences which are now not existent in space, but still 
are existent in our consciousness of succession in time? 

6. Another character of memory appears in the ends 
toward which its activity tends. Biologically considered, 
the end or vital use of sense-perception is some muscular 
reaction of advantage to an organism in the struggle of 
life; so indirectly memory, likewise, is useful, and its 
origin may be traced back to its utility. From the point 
of view of the naturaUst, memory, Hke other animal 
functions, may be supposed to have arisen because it had 
to be developed in order that life might go on and not 
fail on the earth. 

We should follow the evolutionist so far as he can re- 
trace the natural history of mental Hfe; but admitting 
such utility of memory in general to the conservation of 
life, the especial point to be marked here is that memory 
may be directed toward an end beyond any immediate 
utility; it does not necessarily occasion a direct reaction 
of the motor-system. Memory performs an intermediary 
and preparatory service; it will recall the past as useful 
for future movements far beyond the requirements of the 
present. It is a recall of past experience that may in- 
hibit, modify, or intensify a movement suggested by a 
direct perception of something in the environment. 
Thus, so far as it acts on the motor mechanism, it acts 
selectively and for immediate ends. But in its utility 
for our life memory is not only a looking backward, but 
also an anticipation of future ends. Our best memories 
are our truest prophets. In its immediate and most nearly 
automatic use, as possibly in the animal world, memory 
is comparable to the tempering and bending of a spring 
and the compression put upon it, ready to be released, as 
the touch of some demand may let go the movement to 
be made. Memory with us is so much means for future 



82 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

work. It is in the development of mind the acquisition 
of capacity to learn, and for ulterior purposes. As such 
it has unique character, and when once acquired it was 
destined to play a great role in evolution. 

Such being the distinctive characters of the power to 
remember, how far can we reach from a purely biological 
point of view an imderstanding of them? 

There can be no doubt that animals have acquired re- 
tentive and discriminating memories up to a certain de- 
gree, and that they can learn somewhat from repeated 
experiences. A lower kind or degree of memory, de- 
pendent on physiological conditions, but without stimulus 
or response from higher, ideational centres, might ac- 
count for the more intelligent animal habits, and also 
the limited kind of education which they are capable of 
receiving. It has been observed with much truth that 
*'the great advantage of man over the higher animals is 
not so much in the fact as in the method of his learning." 
A child learns by repeated movements; so does an animal. 
An awareness of movement, a feeHng of overlapping mo- 
tions, one lingering and taken up into another motion, 
and a consequent grouping of similar movements in some 
sense of continuous action, very likely may be the physi- 
ological beginning of memory both in animal and human 
life. But the animal Hfe seems to enter only upon an 
elementary method of learning, and to come to an end 
of its capacity not far from where it began. The child 
goes on; at the end of its physiological experience of asso- 
ciated movements, it presses on in a new method of self- 
education; for it develops the capacity of holding to- 
gether in its consciousness these varied movements and 
experiences and using a succession of them in one pur- 
poseful act. The child acquires a definite time-sense. 
Besides having a certain elementary sameness of sensa- 
tion, prolonging itself through a succession of move- 
ments; besides learning to act in habitual response to 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 8$ 

stimuli that may set going this train of movements; the 
child becomes possessed of a power to grasp the series of 
movements as a whole, to have an idea of them in their 
interrelations as parts or sequences, and hence intention- 
ally and intelligently to use them and other co-ordinated 
motions for the end of obtaining what it desires. The 
child, that is, forms ideas and uses ideas for the attain- 
ment of what it wants. Thus the purely physiological 
limits of its education are broken through, and an in- 
dividual person becomes capable of learning indefinitely. 
The dog, if its life were prolonged indefinitely, would still 
be a dog; the child in time will put away the things of a 
child; if its fife is prolonged into the hereafter, it may 
become as a son of the Highest. In this connection Mr. 
John Fiske's reason for the prolongation of human in- 
fancy in comparison with the quickness with which the 
higher animals come to full possession of their powers is 
an illuminating suggestion. The physical and instinctive 
growth of the infant is retarded by the necessary slower 
development of the mental powers, to which the body is 
to be made subject. Man, just because he is a creature 
of finer nature and higher promise, requires more care 
and more time for his maturing. He has not merely to 
find himself at once as animal, but in time to come to 
know himself as a man. 

So far, then, we have followed the physiological approach 
toward the problem of memory; have we found thus its 
inner secret? The same question-mark that has met us 
thus far at every turn of the inquiry meets us after each 
one of these specific characters of memory which we have 
just described. When we ask. How are memory-images 
retained? the physiologists must answer frankly: We do 
not know. Physiological psychology comes to a blank 
wall at the end of a blind alley. It leads up to certain 
areas of the brain as the regions in which the sensori- 
motor mechanism of perception and the associative func- 



84 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

tions may be located; but not a gleam of light is thereby 
thrown upon the means by which perceptions are retained, 
recalled, and re-combined in memory. 

The first hypothesis to suggest itself that memory- 
images are stored up as physical contents of special cells 
is too crude and gross to deserve serious notice. Anatomy 
discovers no card-catalogue pigeonholed in so many cells 
of the brain. Can the retention of myriads of fleeting 
impressions be imagined through more or less permanent 
ultra-microscopic modifications of the molecular constit- 
uents of the cells? Can memories be retained as cell 
habits? It is true that a minute living cell contains 
within itself a marvel of potentialities, the depth and ex- 
tent of which biology has but partially disclosed. In 
view of its known potencies one might be ready to ex- 
claim: To the living cell nothing is impossible! Never- 
theless even its marvellous prepotency is limited in its 
direction; it may only work along certain predetermined 
lines; its energies are not transferable in all directions, 
nor transformable into everything of which we become 
conscious. A germ contains, as Weismann would hold, 
determinants of specific hereditary forms. But that is 
conceived as its distinctive and fixed mode of structure 
or form of energy. It is not the impression of one thing 
after another laid upon it, to be peeled off on demand. 
The permanent retention by the germ-plasm of its specific 
form and function, which may be modified only by selec- 
tive transmission lies at the basis of heredity. But germ 
modifications and a collection of images in a cell are 
quite different conceptions. And when we consider that 
the cell, while retaining its original form and acting ac- 
cording to specific determinants, is itself subject to con- 
stant change, that it is never a stagnant pool, but that 
there ever flows through it a stream of protoplasmic 
material, it becomes as difficult to imagine countless im- 
pressions of the past to have been imprinted and over- 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 85 

laid upon its substance, as it would be to suppose that a 
flowing stream could retain the reflection of every mo- 
mentary gleam of light or passing shadow on its rippling 
surface. 

Besides this, were any such hypothesis of cortical re- 
tention of past impressions conceivable, the hypothesis is 
rendered dubious by certain phenomena of forgetfulness, 
as in various forms of aphasia. In such cases what is 
lost does not appear to be words stored up in brain-cells, 
but rather the power to connect auditory sounds with 
other sense-organs and appropriate responses. It is not 
the loss of memories, but some break in the memorizing 
connections that seems to be indicated in such failures to 
recollect.^ We accept as physiologically true Bergson's 
remark: "The brain-centres are no more the depositories 
of pure memory, that is, of visual objects, than the organs 
of sense are depositories of real objects." ^ Similarly 
Professor J. R. Angell observes: ''Recognition seems to 
be an ultimate and unanalyzable property of conscious- 
ness."* But he falls into a misleading method of ex- 
pression, too common among recent psychologists, when 
he adds: "Even if we find it impossible, as we sometimes 
do, to recall a certain idea, we must believe that the ex- 
perience in which we originally encountered it has left 
its indelible impress upon the substance of the brain," etc. 
(p. 231). This is merely metaphorical language. The 
brain is not a static, plastic substance, like wax, on which 
impressions may be "embedded." And even if it were, 
the added difiiculty would arise of conceiving how one 
impression after another of myriads of them could be un- 
covered at will without destroying overlying imprints. 
So far, then, as mental retention of images is concerned, 
there seems to be no adequate physiological explanation 
of memories. 

^ We shall return to these losses of memory later, p. 162. 
^Op. cit., p. 187. ^Psychology, p. 225. 



86 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

The difficulties in the way of a purely mechanical theory 
of memory continue to multiply when we take into con- 
sideration the other two characters of memory which 
have just been mentioned — the power of recall and of dis- 
crimination. These, however, involve other mental func- 
tions and may be better understood when discussed later 
in connection with the association of ideas. The powers 
of recall and discrimination are outstanding facts in psy- 
chology. Recollection is a conscious attack upon un- 
consciousness; it is a summoning of other memories in 
the conscious effort to recover a lost memory. What 
is this awareness of a lost memory for which we search 
until we find it?^ 

We mark, then, in memory another noticeable sign of 
meaning, as we pass on along the trail in the direction to 
which it also points. 

IV 

Energy in Thinking 

The first distinct thought is an epoch in the life of the 
infant. The first clear thought in which man came to 
himself in some far-off time marked the beginning of a 
new age on the earth. It was as epochal as the first stir- 
ring of life in matter. In neither event is there any lack 
of continuity, any failure to connect the formed with the 
forming in the process of evolution, as the biologist would 
say, and, as the ideaHst would say further, in the harmony 
of the Divine thought which is objectified in the created 
whole. This new kingdom of thought, Hke the kingdom 
of heaven, comes without observation. From a varia- 

*"It is found," says Wundt, "that reproduction of ideas in the strict 
sense of renewal in its unchanged form of an earlier idea, never takes place 
at all, but that what really does happen in an act of memory is the rise of a 
new idea in consciousness, always differing from an earlier idea to which it is 
referred, and deriving its elements as a rule from various preceding ideas." 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 87 

tion seemingly slight from mere animal awareness of being 
there has proceeded a vast and ever-increasing significance 
and worth. 

At the starting-point of the interpretation of what has 
been given in the power of thinking, we are to keep in 
mind this fact: thought has its roots in and its vital con- 
nection with the whole world of outward reality from 
which it has sprung. It cannot, therefore, become ab- 
solutely foreign and unrelated to external reality. At its 
highest reach and ripest fruitfulness it remains in its root- 
principle one with nature. It may not deny its kinship. 
From the first germination of thought in the soil prepared 
by nature for its upspringing mind has grown to its matu- 
rity, reason has risen to its superiority, and there has ap- 
peared in its season the blossoming of poetry as well as 
the full fruitfulness of the tree of knowledge. In very 
truth the tree of Hfe has become the tree of knowledge. 
This primal unity of origin, which modern scientific phi- 
losophy assumes, is enough to warrant us in excluding 
the idea of an ultimate dualism between mind and body; 
or, to put it in its most general statement, between the 
reason of man and the reasonableness of the world. The 
ultimate reality in both is one, and reasonable. 

To think is also to act, although the thought-action 
may not betray itself in visible motions. To some extent 
the energy exercised in thinking often overflows into mus- 
cular reactions, as in expressive gestures, or as an act of at- 
tention will be felt in a certain physical tension, or may be 
observable in a strained attitude of the body. Thoughts 
of specific objects may occasion involuntary movements 
corresponding to the sensory stimulus which their pres- 
ence in the mind excites; as when one is thinking of a 
favorite morsel of food, or a familiar tune, he may smack 
his lips or begin to hum the melody. That thinking is 
action, and often intense action, is witnessed by such 
overflow of energy into the efferent nerve-paths, or the 



SS THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

resonance of it in other cerebral centres of the sensori- 
motor organization. The expenditure of energy in the 
act of thinking is known, likewise, in our consciousness of 
effort while following a course of thought; it taxes us to 
do so. We have to concentrate our mental forces to 
hold fast an abstract idea, to pursue closely a line of rea- 
soning, to grasp clearly a conclusion. We rise from the 
effort with a sense of fatigue greater sometimes than any 
weariness we may have felt as a result of active physical 
exertion for a similar length of time. This loss of energy 
in thinking is measurable by the expense of physiological 
energy. The significance of this familiar experience of 
thinking as action was too much overlooked in the older 
metaphysical psychologies, as it is frequently misinter- 
preted in the modern physiological explanations of mental 
activities. When ideas have been regarded as so many 
mental states, and the laws of thought as though they 
were an external framework for mind, instead of regard- 
ing thinking as a Hving process, and its laws as modes of 
mental energizing, this has imparted to mental philosophy 
a certain unreality, and its value has been reduced to 
that of an autopsy of a dead consciousness. On the other 
hand, laboratory observations of descriptive psychology 
lead but a Httle way into self-knowledge unless they are 
also introspectively searched and interpreted in their 
values for hfe. 

In the external world energy exists in two forms, po- 
tential and kinetic. Reflective examination discloses 
something of the same kind in the world of thought; 
thinking-energy may be both potential and kinetic, both 
a stored-up energy and an energy manifested in the action 
of thinking. It is potential in the elements of the mental 
world, such as sensori-motor tendencies, instincts, per- 
cepts, habits, memory-images, concepts, and those ideas 
which the older psychologies regarded as innate. It is 
kinetic in every act of thinking; we expend energy when- 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 89 

ever we consciously think. The conception of inter- 
atomic energy (with which modern physics has made us 
familiar in its account of radioactivity) may be bor- 
rowed to lend theoretical distinctness to our conceptions 
of mental functioning, and may be carried still further as 
an analogy of aid in construing the higher intellectual 
processes. Regarded in the light of this analogy of the 
atom as a field within which vast potencies are massed, 
so a sense-perception or a memory, as w£ have already 
observed, may be conceived as anything but a passive 
affair. The potential energy latent in consciousness of a 
dear memory or a great thought may be instantaneously 
realized in an act of devotion, or become the inspiring 
power of a noble deed. In the world of mind an idea may 
contain radiant forces as measureless as an atom of 
radium in the world of matter. 

In the process of thinking three phases may be intro- 
spectively observed, and to some extent subjected also 
to experimental determination: viz., the coming into the 
mind of ideas already formed, the assuming of definite 
relations of these ideas to one another as objects of thought, 
and the relating activity of the mind. The three facts to 
be accounted for are the ideas, their relations, and the 
energy expended in putting them into their relations. In 
the preceding pages we have been occupied with the 
elementary part of this cognitive process; it might be 
caUed the natural history of the primary contents of per- 
sonal consciousness.^ Our knowledge of the genesis and 
development of intelligence is enough to assure us that 
we can accept our primary concepts at their face value 
as representing a genuine world. Ideas, so far as they 
are verified in action, represent actualities, and will not 
be disowned by the nature of things. As the pragma- 

^ For a complete and notable treatise on this subject the reader is referred 
to Mr. Hobhouse's recent volume on Development and Purpose, especially 
his discussion of the development of ideas. 



90 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

tists tell us, our current ideas have value in exchange; in 
the daily transactions of mind with the external world 
they are tried and proved; they are not counterfeits of 
our mental coining. 

The second of the phases of thinking just mentioned 
consists of the relations assumed by objects of thought 
in our mental dealing with them. These are the judg- 
ments that we form, the combinations which are put to- 
gether in our concepts, and the order that they may 
assume in reasoning. It is the business of logic to deal 
with these inter-mental relations of ideas and their laws 
of association and combination. But in that field, which 
from the philosophies of the ancients has been under cul- 
tivation, it is not necessary for our purpose to linger. We 
pause only to take notice of the fact that logic, as modern 
writers are reconstructing it scientifically, leads away from 
any mechanistic conceptions of the relations of ideas. 
Logic is to be dynamically rather than mechanically con- 
ceived. It is not to be treated as a constitutional frame- 
work of mind, in which ideas are arranged like things; its 
laws are expressive of original modes of mental behavior, 
according to the conception of logic which some recent 
writers hold. Thus Bosanquet says: "By logic we under- 
stand, with Plato and Hegel, the supreme law or nature 
of experience, the impulse toward unity and coherence 
(the positive spirit of non-contradiction) by which every 
fragment yearns toward the whole to which it belongs 
and every self to its completion in the Absolute, and of 
which the Absolute itself is at once an incarnation and a 
satisfaction," etc.^ "It is the strict and fundamental 
truth that love is the mainspring of logic" (p. 341). So 
McDougall says of the development of ideas, their dis- 
crimination from general to particulars, and their succes- 
sive relations, that "the mind does not play a passive 
part in the formation of associations." "It relates ob- 

1 Individuality and Value, p. 340. 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 91 

jects in so far as it is interested in them in that relation." 
In association, when two objects are perceived as related, 
"the mere spatial relation of the two visual forms is of 
no interest. There is something in that relation that ex- 
ercises 'my interest'; out of all the details of the scene 
presented to my vision, *my mind' seizes upon these two 
objects and their relation." He illustrates "the impossi- 
biHty of describing a simple process of association in terms 
of sensation and imagery." ^ 

The third characteristic of thinking lies directly in the 
line of our inquiry — the relating energy of the mind: 
What power is this which enables us so to put things to- 
gether in thinking of them ? What is the nature and 
meaning of that relating activity of which we are con- 
scious when we are thinking, by which things are not 
merely thrown together in our minds at haphazard, or 
by outward suggestions only, but deHberately and in an 
orderly sequence? In a course of thought there seems 
to be going on under our introspective eye a specific proc- 
ess, manifesting a distinctive kind of energizing: what is 
it? Again our answer must be, we can tell what it means 
only by what it does. The behavior of mind in con- 
scious thinking is certainly unlike any other kind of be- 
havior of which physicists or biologists can give us in- 
formation. It is clearly not identical with a nervous re- 
flex, or a reception of a sensation, or with the flashing 
into consciousness of a perception. Nor is it the meeting 
of perceptions and re-presentations in memory. We find 
elements from all these experiences combining in our 
thinking, and symbolized in our words; but in none of 
these do we catch ourselves in the act of reasoning — of 
relating the contents given in consciousness. That is a 
special kind of mental exertion. We are doing something 
with the contents presented in our minds when we set 
them in order as we think of them; and we are quite 

* McDougall, Wm., Psychology, loi. 



92 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

conscious of the expenditure of mental energy when we 
think hard. A differential mark of the energy manifested 
in thinking is this : reasoning is a selective process, a vol- 
untary selective action, under mental laws, of objects to 
be compared in a judgment or unified in a conclusion. 
This selective process leads also to further definition of 
the relations to one another of successive combinations of 
ideas, and involves, moreover, some determination of their 
relation as objects of thought to the mind that thinks 
them. Thoughts are not merely thoughts, they are our 
thoughts; we are the reasoners; reasoning is a personally 
conducted tour. The act of thinking is quite a voluntary 
act, involving attention and control. We set our minds 
to the task presented by the problem. We hold ourselves 
to it sometimes with much effort. We will think it 
through. And in the world of thought, once we have 
fairly entered it, how free we may become! The earth 
cannot keep us down; no horizons shall shut us in; seas 
cannot separate us; the power of thought may Hft the 
mind up as upon wings, and leave the whole world far 
beneath us. In intense thinking the body passes out of 
mind, as though for rapt moments of thought we were 
disembodied spirits. Of such freedom and exaltation of 
mental vision one has said: "Whether in the body I know 
not; or whether out of the body I know not." Absent- 
mindedness is not vacant-mindedness; it is a pecuHarly 
human power of self-concentrated thought. An animal 
may be caught unawares by a noiseless foe; but no an- 
imal stumbles to its hurt through absent-mindedness, as 
man when most within himself in thought may lose sense 
of the outward world. 

The psychic energy in thinking is further to be differ- 
entiated from any known physiological reactions in these 
particulars : 

I. As an act of judgment. In judging two actions 
occur: there is a backward and forward swing, as it were, 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 93 

of the mind, an analytic and a synthetic motion. Now, 
this might be called a kind of mental metabolism; a 
judgment might be described in a physiological manner 
as a catabolic and an anaboKc action, a breaking down 
of a complex mental unit and a recombining of its ele- 
ments. But the analogy extends only to a differentiation 
of the acts as already acted, not to the nature of the act- 
ing. No physical form of energy is comparable to the 
selective energy, no enzyme to the mental ferment, by 
means of which a given mental content is analyzed and 
synthesized; the physical has only symbolic value in ex- 
planation of the mental. Mental catalyzers cannot be 
identified with chemical enzymes, although their mode of 
acting or results may be comparable. 

2. Mental action in coming to a judgment is not an 
action measurable in space. The ideas combined have 
no extension, and the act of comparing ideas has no 
necessary relation to positions in space. It is a frequent 
fallacy of mechanical and biochemical theories of mental 
phenomena to confuse resemblances of processes with 
identities of causes and effects. 

3. The forming of a judgment takes time, as experi- 
mental psychology may ascertain; but to take time to 
relate objects in thought is not itself a mere ordering 
them in a temporal sequence. They are not compared 
on a time-scale, but on a scale of values and ends. The 
ideas may be ideas of things occupying relative positions 
in space or following one another as events in time; but 
in either case the comparing action of the mind is sui 
generis. 

In regard to time the mind might be compared to a 
traveller within a railway car; looking out of the window, 
all things are passing; looking at conditions within, all 
are motionless; that is, timeless. The sense of passing 
time measured in relation to a succession of outward ob- 
jects is not the same as the contemplation of inner rela- 



94 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

tions. In judgment objects are held fixed in mind, sta- 
tionary in relation to the mind, and their interrelations 
determined as they affect differently the mind. An ex- 
ception to this statement might be taken in the compari- 
son of percepts of external objects. In comparing two 
objects, as two trees or houses, do we not bring them spa- 
tially into juxtaposition, or superimpose lines and forms 
one upon another? Certainly, yet even here the act, as 
we are immediately aware of the comparison, is not an 
act by which the one object is brought from one position 
and placed in another; the comparing is the seeing two 
outward objects in their mutual relations as objects ex- 
isting in space. In abstract thinking spatial relations 
may vanish entirely, and ideas compared as ideas, a time 
element only being involved in the logical sequence, al- 
though not identical with it.^ 



Feeling 

Thus far in seeking for the meaning of the personal life 
we have neglected an element which is at once evanescent 
yet pervasive, hardest to catch in a philosopher's net, yet 
always with us — the feeling or tone of self-conscious life. 
Many psychologists call it the affective side of man's 
nature. Some feeUng accompanies all mental activities; 
it is bound up with sensations; it plays in and out among 
our perceptions; it throws lights and shadows over our 
memories; it will subtly interweave its colors through 
the whole warp of our reasonings; at times it will rise 
and draw into its current all elements and energies of our 
being in some great flood and passion of soul. Feeling is 
itself most changeable yet most persistent, transformable 

^See Wundt, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 113; 153; 422 seq. Compare Bergson 
passim on confusion of time with space. 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 95 

at slightest touch of a passing incident, yet deep as life, 
and stronger than death. One moment feeling lies latent, 
another it is intensely awake; seemingly born of the 
senses, yet giving birth to the idea of duty; delighting in 
the beautiful, and rising at times above all clouds and 
darkness to supernal trust in God. Moral and religious 
feeling in the heart of man is witness of his birthright as 
a son of the Highest, and prophet of his immortality. 

Is this a purely subjective witness? Is feeling simply 
our personal tone and temperature? From the physio- 
logical side it is so to be investigated; its origin and func- 
tioning as an expression of organic conditions are to be 
traced, so far as it is possible to do so. After this is done, 
the same question will recur: Is the physiology of feeling 
all of our affective experience? Or does feeling in any 
way put us in touch with outward realities, visible or in- 
visible? Does the feehng nature of us have any appre- 
ciable value for the cognitive nature of us? 

We must start here also, as our method of inquiry all 
along has led us to do, from the facts of experience and 
the results of laboratory investigations of our nature. 
We shall have to determine first what are the sensuous 
roots of the human Hfe of feeling. 

Modern psychology has learned much of interest and 
of educational value regarding the connection between 
bodily conditions and our conscious states of feeling. To 
a considerable extent a natural history of the expression 
of the emotions has been rendered probable since Darwin 
took up that inquiry. By recent psychologists feeling is 
usually distinguished from sensation; the latter has refer- 
ence to the activity of a sense-organ which is stimulated; 
feeling is a conscious state accompanying a bodily sensa- 
tion or other activity of which we are aware. It may be 
called our personal attitude toward whatever may be 
presented in consciousness. A feeling may be a personal 
tone anticipating the reception of a sensation, putting 



96 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

one in an expectant attitude toward something not aa 
yet present; or it may be a remainder only from some 
previous experience. But in either case is it to be iden- 
tified with a sensory stimulus ? Our feelings are not only 
distinguishable qualitatively as different modes of con- 
sciousness, but they admit of degrees of intensity and are 
to be measured in a scale of their own.^ Thus a room 
may be too hot or too cold for us, a sound agreeable or 
unpleasant; but the sense-perception of different degrees 
of temperature, or notes, is one thing, while our feeling in 
relation to them is another thing. When we say too hot 
or too loud, we introduce the personal equation; we do 
not observe merely a difference of quantities or intervals 
between objects as they are perceptible, but we note a 
qualitative difference in the manner in which they affect 
ourselves as too hot or loud for us. Some modern psy- 
chologists reduce simple feelings to three kinds, agreeable 
or disagreeable, the feeHng of excitation or depression, 
and the feeling of strain or relaxation.^ 

A further distinction is to be observed between feelings 
which directly accompany sensation — our feeling of our 
sensations — and the deeper psychic emotions, which may 
indeed affect our whole nervous system, but which are 
internal feelings only slightly, if at all, excited by any- 
thing outwardly affecting us. The distinction just men- 
tioned between sensory feelings and deeper psychic feel- 
ings seems justified by the fact that separate points on 
the skin have been distinguished as the seat of the differ- 
ent sensations of temperature, and of pleasure and pain. 
Pain, therefore, is to be considered primarily as a sensa- 
tion, or sensory feeling, rather than a purely affective state 
of mind. The elementary bodily feelings may be com- 
bined in an endless variety of forms in our consciousness 

*Cp. Bergson: "While perception measures the reflecting power of the 
body, affection measures its power to absorb." 
^ Wundt, Outlines of Psychology (tr. ed. 3), pp. 83 seq. 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 97 

of them; as the bits of colored glass in a kaleidoscope are 
few, while the patterns change with every instantaneous 
jostle. 

As personal feelings are thus vitally dependent upon 
sensations, though not identical with them, so Hkewise 
they are closely connected with the motor-reactions of 
the body. Indeed, Mr. James ventured to account for 
feehngs as consequents of bodily attitudes and expres- 
sions; he said paradoxically: "We do not cry because 
we are sorry, but we are sorry because we cry." We re- 
ceive, that is to say, some outward stimulus, as the sight 
of something pitiable; a moment of repulsion follows as 
a natural reaction, and the corresponding feeling ensues. 
But this extreme statement of the dependence of feeHng 
upon physiological antecedents cannot be held; for "it 
has been shown that the muscular contractions accom- 
panying a feeHng take place in time after the conscious- 
ness of the feeUng has been fully established."^ It must, 
however, be admitted that the physical elements and 
expressions of feeHng have a very large part to play in 
our conscious Hfe of feeHng, and that physiology has suc- 
ceeded in throwing much Hght into the psychology of this 
whole side of human nature. It is quite probable, for in- 
stance, that pleasurable feeHngs are associated with 
motor-reflexes that work in unison in producing a har- 
monious movement; as when a repeated call is answered 
by a response that reHeves the strained attention, and the 
vocal and auditory mechanisms of the person caUing work 
at last together in a regular physiological alternation. 
If, on the other hand, a sound strikes across the Hne of 
attentive interest, and breaks in upon consciousness as 
an interruption of what we are doing, it is felt as a dis- 
agreeable sensation, and this irrespective of the quaHty 
of the sound, so far at least as it is perceived as an inter- 
ruption. Moreover, so subtle are the interrelations of 

^ Judd, Psychology, p. 195. 



98 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

feelings and perceptions, it has been claimed that the 
difference between colors that have a soothing or excit- 
ing effect rests on a basis of the sensational differences 
or feehng-tone produced by colors. It is said to be pos- 
sible by using extreme variations in color quahty to dem- 
onstrate changes in the rate and intensity of the heart 
beat.^ Criminal psychology is proposing to test the 
truthfulness of a witness by the reflex action on the pulse 
of a sudden consciousness of falsehood in answer to a 
question when speaking the truth might betray him. 
Many of our common feelings and changing moods with- 
out doubt correspond to organic conditions and adjust- 
ments. 

From these and other well-known relations between 
bodily and mental states, it has been assumed that feel- 
ings are entirely subjective, the concomitants of physi- 
ological processes, indirectly related to outward objects, 
but being in themselves "matters of personal organiza- 
tion." Particularly in the analysis of aesthetic feelings 
the physiological theory has been ingeniously worked out. 
The perfection of a Greek column, for instance, has been 
explained as resulting from a skilful modification of the 
column, by means of which art succeeded in reHeving the 
optical strain that is occasioned in view of a line sup- 
ported at both ends with no additional strength to hold 
it up in the middle. 

Now, then, after we have gathered up the scientific data 
and received any probable suppositions concerning the 
physical elements involved in our human feelings, have 
we fully disclosed the meaning of them as we are aware 
of it when we feel them ? Does any analysis of the physi- 
cal basis of feeling represent the flow of feeling through 
consciousness? Is our sense of beauty, for instance, in 
our living joy in it, discovered in the most skilful post- 
mortem examination of it? It will be admitted by most 

* Judd, op. ciL, p. 198. 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS . 99 

psychologists that we are as yet far from reducing all 
feeling to a purely sensational process; but it may be 
claimed that the reduction of some phases of feeling to 
physiological antecedents has been carried so far that we 
may make the jump over the remaining gap in the further 
assumption that more knowledge might show nothing 
but physiology at the bottom of our personal feeling. 
Many a working-hypothesis, starting from a slight basis 
of fact, undoubtedly has been justified by subsequent 
experimental knowledge; and this physical theory of 
feeling might be assumed temporarily as a sufficient work- 
ing-theory in mental science, were it not for the every- 
where outstanding circumstances that here likewise, at 
the very points where further extension of knowledge 
ought, according to the theory, to show a lessening of the 
gap between the physical and the psychical, on the con- 
trary the difference between the two seems to widen and 
deepen. While a general correspondence or even to some 
extent a scale of equivalence between physical condi- 
tions and conscious feelings has been shown to exist, it 
is to be remembered that coincidence in time or equiva- 
lence in degrees of intensity is not identity, or proof of 
identity. And at no point has experimental psychology 
succeeded in identifying, or in showing an approximation 
even toward identity between the affective quality and 
the sensory contents of consciousness. The divergence 
rather than ihe approximation appears in the distinc- 
tion that modern psychology has drawn between the 
sensations that are brought into consciousness through 
the organs of sense, or receptors, and the tone of con- 
sciousness — ^the feeling that may pervade it. This dis- 
tinction becomes more evident as we examine it more 
closely and test it by refined experimentation. We shall 
refer to this in another connection. At this point we 
observe more specifically several distinctive characters of 
the affective manifestation of ourselves to ourselves. 



lOo THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

1. They possess a distinctive human quality. Our 
primary feelings come to us bearing a broad human mark. 
They are not merely our individual affections, they are 
organic elements of human life. They are constitutive 
feelings, which make us human; to lose them were to be- 
come dehumanized. The universal human passions, such 
as the primary social affections, the love of the beautiful, 
the moral and religious feeUngs, are rightly to be dis- 
tinguished from the particular emotions, which also have 
their origin in the underlying nature of man, but which 
are our immediate personal responses and adaptations to 
the scenes and calls of our individual lives. These nobler 
human passions no doubt have themselves been formed 
and attempered in the purifying flame of life's strife and 
aspiration; they have been set in the mould of heredity; 
they are our personal gain from the ages past; but this 
method of their acquisition only adds to their human 
value and renders more unquestionable their spiritual 
significance. For they are seen to have a universal value ; 
their attainment has been something other than a deposit 
of material elements. It has been a social acquisition. 
It has been an increase of human value won through long- 
sustained and unconquerable psychic and spiritual forces. 
These dominant human passions witness to the outstand- 
ing and supreme fact that has been realized in evolution 
— the humanness which is revealed in its moral value and 
transcendence in the heart of every true man. We shall 
consider this fact more fully when in another chapter we 
shall inquire concerning the worth of life in the most 
human consciousness of it. 

2. The affective action of personal energy has a marked 
purposive character. To some extent all organic re- 
sponses may be said to have this character. Instinctive 
action takes on an unconscious relation to future condi- 
tions, as in the provision of many species for the future 
of their offspring; but human feeling, rising to a higher 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS loi 

level of intelligence, becomes far-sighted, and with con- 
scious prevision looks through the years to come. We 
not only look through time, but beyond these visible 
heavens; human affections may be set on things above. 
Now this conscious aim even beyond the things that are 
temporal imparts to human affection a potency which it 
is hard indeed to reduce scientifically to any chemistry 
of the affections. For one thing, it maintains a perma- 
nent inhibition over animal passions and natural instincts 
-^an inhibitive power over nervous reflexes more direct 
and commanding than can easily be accounted for as a 
resultant of a conflict between stronger and weaker nerve 
currents. This moral inhibition when formed into a 
habit involves something besides a physiological strain 
under the stress of circumstances. The meeting of two 
neural impulses in a common path, and the habitual in- 
hibition of the one by the other, is indeed a notable phe- 
nomenon within the body; the moral subjection of the 
one to the other is a victory of the spirit. Animal in- 
stinct may suffice to keep a timid bird hovering in seem- 
ingly fearless circlings over its nest; animal instinct may 
go so far as to lead to an unreflective death of one for 
another — we hardly know how far back the Creator be- 
gan to fashion the heart of man, when as yet there was 
none of it. Fearlessness may have had its beginnings 
far back; but perfect love caste th out all fear. Clearly, 
transcendently in human love is evinced the power of 
self-sacrifice. In clear foresight, with deliberate purpose, 
in absolute assertion of a moral right to die for another, 
man has attained the supreme power of self-sacrifice. 
The presence in his consciousness of a supernal ideal will 
inhibit totally the organic wants that cry out in him for 
immediate satisfaction. By a moral determination he 
may disconnect, as it were, the wires that unite his higher 
with his lower nature, and in utter forgetfulness of fear, 
in the glory of his soul, he will give his body to death. 



I02 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

This purposive power of devotion, this ability to give 
up self throughout a lifetime, as well as in an act of la}^- 
ing down Hfe, is a superorganic power. It is a moment 
of an ideational process, and evinces a psychical factor 
capable of binding the past and present in a purpose that 
renders the years of a man's life one life, and fashions it 
all after the power of an endless life. 

In this kind of potential purpose the life of a man is 
not as that of the brutes that perish. Animals, so far 
as we can judge, do not possess a sentient body in which, 
as in man's, there is resident a power purposively to in- 
hibit its own sentience; no natural history of its develop- 
ment can disclose the secret of the origin of this most 
human power. Its source lies farther up the flow of life. 

We are left, then, by empirical psychology facing this 
unanswered question: Do we come into some cognitive 
touch with reality throughout the whole range of the af- 
fective side of personal Ufe? Common sense and phi- 
losophy ahke regard the feehngs which we experience 
through the bodily senses as resulting from contact with 
the outward world, however differently philosophers may 
conceive this relation. But does such cognitive value of 
feeling begin and end with our being consciously affected 
by objects through the senses? Or does it extend from 
the dimmest half-perceived sense-stimulus throughout the 
whole range of our experience? Do the social, moral, 
and religious feelings, directly or indirectly, have any 
hold on reality? The frequent answer is, no immediate 
touch upon supersensible realities can be demonstrated, 
or cognitive value of the religious feeling be admitted; 
for we cannot put ourselves beyond the feeling itself, to 
return upon it, with a clear understanding of its mean- 
ing. Neither, for that matter, can we go beyond a sense- 
perception of anything in the world and say, the image 
in our mind is the object impressing itself upon us; al- 
though the evidence of the senses is so uniformly verified 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 103 

throughout our active dealings with outward things, and 
at the same time is so universal, that we consider any 
doubts of the actuality of the things with which we have 
to do as only an academic question. Pragmatism is 
right in bidding us do the things we may do, and we 
shall know the truth. But why not go further and say, 
if at any one point a feeling, such as is given in sensation, 
can take us out of ourselves, we cannot deny the possi- 
bility that at other points of experience feeling may be 
possessed of a similar transcendent function? From all 
around the margin of our consciousness, the supersensible 
side as well as from the subconscious beneath the thresh- 
old, influences from far and near may be communicated 
to us unawares. We may live and have our being in the 
midst of unseen relations and in an order of existence not 
realized as yet — our consciousness pervaded by a sense 
of something more than eye can see or heart conceive, its 
subjective feelings vibrating to touch of invisible powers 
and its deeps of personal being moved by a supernal at- 
traction.^ 

We raise and leave at present this question, with this 
single observation : It is a question which concerns those 
vital values that the so-called pragmatic philosophy main- 
tains as the scale on which probabilities or degrees of 
truth are to be weighed and determined. Whatever, that 
is, proves itself to have value for the ends of living, what- 
ever fits as adaptation of thought to conduct, bears evi- 
dence of its correspondence to reality; the unfit is the 
untrue. An idea is true so far as it is found to work. 
Judged by this pragmatic test, the higher human feelings 
have approved value in the conduct of life. Pragmatism, 
however, fails by its tests to satisfy the desire for full as- 
surance of truth. The absolute meanings of hfe are not 

^ Lotze admits a comparison as valid between physical and spiritual sen- 
sation, while he holds that both are to be completed in the reason. Grund- 
zUge der Rdigionsphilosophie, p. 3. 



I04 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

measurable on a purely pragmatic scale of degrees of 
value. The fuU worth of feeling in the interpretation of 
personal hfe cannot be estimated until we shall have in- 
quired into other experiences and considered the distinc- 
tive and universal human feelings as they play in and 
out through the whole process of living, and have their 
function to fulfil in the highest development of per- 
sonality. 

VI 

Energy as Known in the Personal Will 

The will of man is an ultimate fact of nature. Will 
exists in us potentially when we are unconscious of exer- 
cising it; and it is manifest as kinetic energy when we 
become aware of ourselves as acting. The will is not a 
separate faculty, it is intimate essence and vitaHty of us. 
It cannot be taken out of any moment of Ufe; it pervades 
whatever we think or feel or do. Will is integrating force 
of personaUty, a formative energy of character. This 
primary fact of will cannot be analyzed into anything 
simpler; nor can it be obscured in the common sense of 
mankind by the controversies and confusions of philos- 
ophy concerning its freedom or determination. What- 
ever we may think about it, will is here, an irremovable 
constant of human experience. It is its own witness 
within every man; one affirms it in the very thought in 
which he would deny it. 

Personal energy, the willed activity of our daily life, 
gives reahty to the conception which scientific thought 
has formed of energy in nature. Unless we take knowl- 
edge of ourselves as wiUing for granted, we have no pos- 
tulate on which natural science may stand to learn how 
the world is moved. Will is the source of our idea of 
force, and the final positive of our knowledge of energy. 
Take this fundamental fact of personal will out of experi- 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 105 

ence, and the corner-stone of all science of nature, its 
forces, continuities, and laws, is removed. Will in us is 
the measure for us of energy in the universe. 

A few general considerations may serve to clear the 
way as, keeping the single aim of our inquiry in mind, 
we enter this much-contested field of philosophy — the 
nature of the will, or, as modem psychologists call it, 
"the conative structure of the mind." 

We take our start from the new point of view which 
biology has opened for psychology. For we are thereby 
enabled to survey this field, as we have other mental 
phenomena, from an illuminating conception of the or- 
ganism and organic functions. This conception does 
away at once with the idea of the mind as an entity 
possessing so many separate faculties, Hke so many com- 
partments each containing specific contents, which it is 
the task of mental philosophy to classify and label. The 
biological view also greatly modifies the association-psy- 
chology, in which knowledge was first reduced to sensa- 
tions as the original mind-stuff; and then subsequent 
mental operations were supposed to consist in sorting 
out, arranging, and combining this sensational material in 
particular concepts and general ideas according to cer- 
tain supposed methods of association.^ Both these views 
are left behind in the biological approach to mental phi- 
losophy. The former was rationaUstic with an ideahstic 
tendency; the latter is sensational with a materialistic 
tendency. Both failed to lay hold of the real, living 
continuity of personal being: the former by its too logical 
method of analysis; the latter by its too mechanical 
method of assembHng the parts of the personal process 
of living. Some biologists, on the other hand, who ven- 

^The reader who wishes to familiarize himself with the latest recrudes- 
cence of the older sensation-association theory of knowledge may find it 
ably delineated in Professor Titchener's Experimental Psychology of the 
Thought Processes. 



io6 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

ture into psychology, are in danger of carrying their de- 
scriptive method into superficial determination of the 
facts of consciousness. When in some instances they as- 
sume hastily that physical analogies indicate the begin- 
ning and the end of mental functioning, and that the 
elaborate systems of the master builders of philosophy, 
before they arrived in their laboratories, were vain fan- 
tasies, they are apt themselves to rush headlong into 
speculation, and to fall unawares into perils of meta- 
physics. Less contempt for the great thinkers of past 
ages and some knowledge of the history of philosophy 
from Aristotle to Kant might have enabled them to avoid 
such rash biological dogmatism. Notwithstanding such 
pitiful overconfidence, their researches in their proper 
domain are of unquestionable value. Modern science, 
taken in the large, affords a new vantage-ground for ap- 
prehending the meaning and ends of Ufe, which Aristotle 
did not have for his analysis of human nature, and to 
which the Platonic ideas could not return from the clouds; 
in view of which likewise Kant's categories and antin- 
omies might have been drawn more truly to the actual 
lines and movements of human experience. Hence we 
may seek to make a fresh start in our inquiry from a 
more biological or genetic point of view, as we would meet 
the old questionings concerning the nature of the will. 

As the conclusion of an empirical inquiry, Wundt, that 
pioneer in physiological psychology, declares: "Such ac- 
tivity regarded as activity for its own self, which appears 
as the source of our doing as well as our being affected, 
we call our 'I.' This *I,' thought of as isolated from the 
objects which limit its activity, is our willing. There is 
absolutely nothing without man, or within him, which 
he can fully and wholly call his own, except his will." ^ 

What, then, we ask, may be scientifically learned con- 
cerning the manner in which man from his infancy gains 

^System der Phil., s, 377, 2 Auf. 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 107 

this conscious sense of himself as will? The process of 
gradual self-possession in its main outlines may be traced; 
recent text-books of psychology pursue it with general 
agreement; and the psychology of the growing child is 
now becoming a popular educational discipline. A grad- 
ual acquisition of personal will and power of self-control 
is discernible in the earUer period of child Ufe. At first 
the infant, beginning to find itself in the use of its senses 
and muscular movements, shows a surplus of nervous 
vitaHty, which overflows in aimless motions. The motor- 
paths, up and down which stimulations pass to the brain- 
centres and return in muscular movements, are at first 
indeterminate and unworn; so when the infant sees a 
brightly colored ball, or hears a rattle shaken within 
reach of its hand, its entire little body may be set in mo- 
tion in response to the exciting object. The effect of the 
sensation occasioned by the ball or rattle has been com- 
pared to that of a sudden explosion in the brain-centres, 
scattering in all directions, or impelled along the efferent 
lines of least resistance. There is a general dispersed 
muscular response; the charge is fired, but not aimed. 
It is not as yet held within a single nerve-cylinder, and it 
does not go straightway and hit the mark. In this over- 
flowing responsiveness, quite accidentally at first some 
motion of the arms may bring the object within reach of 
the hand, the fingers close and open and shut again upon 
it; and the child has had its first lesson in what is to be 
a lifelong education. That moment marks an early re- 
sponsive action toward a perceived object, which sub- 
sequent trials and successes shall wear into a straight 
path. The grasp of the Httle hand on the ball acts also 
as an added stimulus to the eye and the musculature as- 
sociated with the sense of sight. Many attempts follow 
until the nervous reflexes become definitely established 
and common paths for stimulations from several senses 
are habitually traversed. Consequently the waste of 



io8 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

vital energies in aimless movements grows less and less. 
Certain co-ordinations in the bodily movements become 
automatic as the child gains voluntary control and direc- 
tion of its several members and faculties. This acquisi- 
tion of co-ordinated action is quite early manifested in 
its turning its eyes toward an object, and at the same 
time adapting the movements of arms and legs to reach 
and grasp it; and later in the slower training of the 
smaller muscles and the finer nerve facilities in the dis- 
criminations of touch and taste, and the mastery of 
articulate sounds. 

What is gained physiologically in the first seven years 
or so of childhood consists largely in the number of fine 
structural connections and organic co-ordinations for the 
coming ability of the man to use at will the whole bodily 
mechanism of mind. The full significance of this gain 
does not appear until later on there is cast back into this 
early period of self-acquisition the light reflected from 
the experience of the full-grown power of the educated 
man. But the first acquisition in child life of the power 
of voluntary organic control and purposive use of the 
members of its body is of itself enough to leave us once 
more face to face with the ultimate question of our per- 
sonal being and destiny. What is the interpretation of 
this intelligent self-control, and the conscious direction of 
the personal organism to determinate ends? If at the 
beginnings of immediate and obvious interrelations of 
mind and body, as the infant child gradually comes to 
self-possession, the physiology of the process leaves this 
ultimate question directly raised, but unanswered, we 
shall hardly expect to find later on that any anatomy of 
our brains or physiological research into our methods of 
behavior will reveal the final secret of our indwelling per- 
sonal energy or yield an adequate interpretation of us to 
our own thought of ourselves. 

The psychical value of these earliest signs of a human 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 109 

kind of control, and a distinctive quality of mental ener- 
gizing in the activities of the little child, is enhanced by 
the fact, to which we have previously referred, which 
Mr. John Fiske has emphasized, of the prolongation of 
human infancy in contrast with the immediate begin- 
nings of instinctive behavior in the higher animals.^ 
For if the physiology of it were indeed the whole of the 
child's life, then the human mechanisms likewise of 
adaptive response to immediate vital needs might have 
been as promptly and instinctively set in motion in the 
infant as they are among animals; delay in development 
in human infancy would have been of slight value for 
natural selection, and a prolonged period for the child 
to acquire automatic control of its movements would have 
been perilous and hence superfluous. The slow formation 
of the structural organization of the brain would have 
proved a useless delay, inimical to survival, unless this 
retardation had been for some further end of hfe. The 
prolonged helplessness of human infancy can best be ex- 
plained as preparation for a higher kind of life, of which 
in due season we become conscious. 

Certain marked characteristics of human energy will 
appear obvious as introspectively we become aware of its 
working. These are to be fully taken into account in a 
sufficient interpretation of personality. 

I. It is individuaHzed energy of will. So far as we 
can catch ourselves in the moment of acting, we are 
aware of our acts as self-willed. We do them by an exer- 
cise of inner power that goes forth and makes the acts 
ours, and not another's working. This immediate con- 
sciousness of ourselves as willing, as acting, not passive, 
beings is a primal psychic fact, not to be obscured or set 
aside by any reflective questioning concerning the free- 
dom or determination of the will. 

Hardly are the instinctive reflexes established, and the 

* Darwinism and Other Essays, pp. 45-48; Destiny of Man, p. 53. 



no , THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

earKer co-ordinated movements confirmed, when among 
the hereditary tendencies individual characteristics begin 
to appear. The infant, coming to itself, becomes an in- 
dividual, and the individual will asserts itself in the 
growing child. Individuality, as distinct from racial or 
specific traits, if it seems in any slight degree discernible 
in the higher animals, cannot be said to be set deeply in 
animal nature. Even those domesticated animals that 
show the most intelligence are not so much self-trained 
as taught by their trainers. The early education of the 
child, on the contrary, is in many ways distinctively self- 
training. It learns not merely to control its own motions 
or to acquire responsive habits: voluntarily it adapts its 
motor mechanisms to its awakening desires; it will gain 
for itself the co-ordinated control of sense and muscle, 
of eye and ear, of fingers and of speech to enable it to do 
whatever it wants to do. We say the child has a will 
of its own. The twofold fact of the prolongation of 
human infancy in utter helplessness, and the growth of 
individuality out of it, is a mark of unmistakable psychic 
significance; it means some future signal victory of this 
personal being over the material world which has given 
him birth. 

2. Personal action is energy consciously directed toward 
an end. We act in purposive relation to ends; we do 
something for something. At the focal point of con- 
sciousness, will and object of will are held together and 
the whole personal force thrown into one determination. 

3. Another and striking characteristic of personal en- 
ergy is that it is unified action. In willing we act with 
our whole selves. We may have been distracted up to 
the moment of willing, but an act of will makes us whole 
again. From every direction, by motives immediately 
in mind or that may arise from beneath the horizon of 
consciousness or descend from the infinite above, the will 
may have been stirred and all the energies of our being 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS iii 

set vibrating; but when the resolve is once taken, and the 
will acts, we move forth in the unity and power of our 
whole personahty. 

4. The will is pervasive, coextensive with the entire 
sphere of personal individuality. This is a truth of ex- 
perience which has been too often overlooked in discus- 
sions of the will and its freedom. The will has been iso- 
lated in a critical analysis of the contents of experience, 
and discussed as though it were an independent entity; 
but in life we ourselves are not divided. In actual per- 
ceiving, attending, feeling, acting, we are not taken apart 
and analyzed; something of each power of our being is 
present in every state and act of ours. Conation is never 
absent as an element of the personal life. Even in our 
quiet moments, when passing thoughts flit across our 
minds like shadows over a landscape on a summer day, 
the will it is that has bidden turtiultuous thoughts be still, 
that clears the mind of too pressing cares, and secures 
over the whole field of consciousness the calm air and 
the careless hour. And if the time for quick action comes, 
it is the will that gathers the forces of mind and body in 
one onset and brave charge for duty to be done, the full 
measure of a man's devotion to be rendered, if need be, 
and obedience to the ideal to be followed even unto death. 

5. Personal energy of will presents thus the signal 
character of freedom. The attribute of freedom belongs 
not to the will in itself considered; the person in his in- 
tegrity, in all his motivation, is free. 

Just here we have one of the most valuable contribu- 
tions that modern biology has to offer to psychology. It 
brings to the discussion of free will its conception of or- 
ganic unity — of the organism as a whole controlling for 
its vital ends as a whole the functionings of its parts. 
This conception of the organic whole serves to lift us out 
of some of the perplexities in which abstract discussions 
concerning the freedom of the will have been confused. 



112 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

It is not the freedom of the will which is the ultimate vital 
fact; it is the freedom of the man. Thus the method of 
biological inquiry leads us out of the dilemmas of philo- 
sophical treatises on the Freedom of the Will. The older 
analytic faculty-psychology conceived of the will as a 
something set in the midst of conflicting motives, and 
acting according to the pull of the strongest motive at 
any given moment — a weathercock does that amid the 
shifting winds; but how is the will free if it so shifts with 
the prevailing motive? Or would a mental chart show 
anything but a resultant line of motion according to the 
law of a parallelogram of motive forces? Either arbi- 
trariness of action on this supposition or predetermina- 
tion seems to be the only alternative for philosophy; and 
both are contrary to experience. Now biology has dis- 
closed a secret of life that may help us discern more clearly 
the meaning and method of personal freedom. It has 
discovered that there is "a struggle of the parts" among 
themselves within the harmony and the wholeness of the 
organism. Individual cells may strive each for its share 
of the nourishment that flows through the body, and 
particular determinants of the germ plasm may main- 
tain each its specific virility, while all this struggle of the 
parts is combined, co-ordinated, made subservient to the 
growth of the organic structure and the changing adapta- 
tions of the organism to its environment. Internecine 
strife of the parts, brought under the law of organic con- 
trol, becomes the means of development, the method of 
progressive life, the power of individual survival. As an 
organic physical unity an animal may quietly graze in 
the meadows, leap from its enemy, or spring upon its 
prey. So life by unifying its forces has conquered. 
This knowledge which biology has gained, when carried 
over as an analogous principle into the domain of per- 
sonal power and conduct, conceived of as a mental prin- 
ciple of unification, and held as spiritual law of personal 



PERSONAL DYNAMICS 113 

life, simplifies greatly the vexed problem of human free- 
dom, and puts behind us the hard task of finding a free 
will located at some point of indetermination and con- 
flicting motives. A stronger motive, forcing its way in 
upon us, does not touch the will, as though it were a 
trigger, and set us off; in the concentration of ourselves, 
in the determinant personal unity of our thoughts, habits, 
desires, memories, and hopes, we live and act, we go to 
our day's task or let ourselves rest in quiet sleep when our 
day's work is done. We are free, not from our thoughts 
or motives, but with and through all our thoughts and 
motives, in the personal conduct of our lives. Whatever 
difficulties may remain, or further question arise, we es- 
cape from much philosophical controversy over an ab- 
stract freedom of the will by the help of this vital view of 
personal life as one continuous activity, a real self-unifying 
energy, the actual development and behavior of the per- 
sonal organism as a whole. The problem ceases thus to 
present the old metaphysical dilemma: How can will be 
free to choose among conflicting motives? It becomes 
part of our final interrogation of nature: How can vital 
spontaneity enter into material order ? How can organic 
adaptation find place among mechanical forces? How 
can the ever-advancing point of life press on and on to 
higher issues and reach spiritual ends? 

We are concerned, however, in our inmiediate inquiry 
with the experience of personal freedom only so far as it 
marks another stage of evolution with its unmistakable 
psychic sign; we continue, therefore, in the direction to 
which it points toward our utmost possible apprehension 
of the meaning of personal Hfe. 

It is one of Bergson's striking remarks that " all determinism 
will thus be refuted by experience, but every attempt to define 
freedom will open the way to determinism." — (Time and Free 
Will, p. 230.) The first part of this statement is true because, 



114 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

as just observed, in willing one acts as a personal unit, and the 
experience of self in willing is not questioned in the act of will- 
ing, whatever afterward we may think about it. Freedom is 
a problem of philosophy, not a question of real Hfe. What we 
are conscious of as free will is the "inner dynamic" of person- 
ality. The other half of the remark, that nevertheless any at- 
tempt to define freedom will open the way to determinism, is 
true in so far as in order to define it we must first put it into 
some conceptual form, and when we do that the very hfe of it 
slips from the logical analysis of it; it is like a stained section 
of a biological cell, not the living thing itself. 

While we may not further define freedom of will positively, 
we may negatively determine that it is not like some other con- 
ceptions. Thus free action as progressively experienced does 
not resemble the swinging to and fro of a pendulum as a result 
of some mechanical escapement — personal free action is a '' dy- 
namic becoming." The law of physical conservation may be 
an analogue of a law of psychical conservation of energy; but 
each will work after its own kind. The one we observe in the 
world without us to be mechanical; the other we experience 
in the world within us to be psychical or of a spiritual order. 
It is forcing analogy into unreality to assume identity of laws 
in different orders of being. Bergson points out a distinctive 
mark of the order of personal action which differentiates it from 
the mechanical order; the latter is reversible, the former is 
irreversible. We can recover mechanical energy through a 
series of transformations; we never can Hve over again our 
past. Conservation of physical energy assumes its perfect 
reversibility without increase or loss; psychical energy permits 
of increase or loss; there is no law of exact equivalence in the 
succession of events in human consciousness. We are always 
becoming personally something different, and never are what 
we were. Flow fast, or flow slow, the stream of personal life 
flows on and on; and does not return upon itself. Life for us is 
not a closed circle, but motion toward an endless, an infinite 
something. — (Bergson, Time and Free Will. pp. 150 seq. and 
passim.) 



CHAPTER IV 

THE RELATION OF BODY AND MIND 

In the preceding chapter we have found given in ex- 
perience both psychical and physical factors, neither re- 
ducible to the other; but, nevertheless, in body and mind 
we Hve and act as personal unities. What, then, is the 
relation between these two ? How are elements so unlike 
to be conceived as working together in our Ufe and con- 
duct? Do we exist as souls that have bodies, but which 
are separable from embodiment? Or how is this appar- 
ent dualism of mind and body to be resolved? Descrip- 
tive psychologists tell us that this question is not their 
affair; they have to do only with the behavior of the 
human organism, and with manifestations of mind in the 
body, which can be observed apart from any theories. 
It is profitable that in this way, apart from all human in- 
terest in ourselves, and irrespective of any ulterior con- 
sideration, psychological studies and laboratory experi- 
ments should be scientifically pursued. But the human 
interest presses hard after the scientific hunt, and at any 
moment one comes back to the old questions that have 
ever been in the mind and the heart of man: What is the 
value of my Hfe? What is its full worth for me? Are 
we scientifically permitted to speak longer of our own 
souls? Mr. James consents in a preliminary way to 
speak of the soul, although he remarks "that readers of 
anti-spiritualistic training and prepossessions, advanced 
thinkers, or popular evolutionists, will perhaps be a little 
surprised to find this despised word now sprung upon 
them at the end of so physiological a train of thought. 
But the plain fact is that all the arguments for a 'pon- 



ii6 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

tifical cell' or an 'arch-monad' are also arguments for 
that well-known spiritual agent in which scholastic psy- 
chology and common sense have always beheved." ^ 

More or less materiahstic imaginations still linger about 
the idea of the soul, which render it a doubtful word for 
use in a precise scientific psychology; we may go as far 
as our inquiry thus far has brought us, and no farther, 
if we designate this factor of Hfe, which is recognized in 
our self-consciousness, as the psychical constant. We 
have, then, directly confronting us the dualism between 
the physiological system and the psychical constant in 
the unity of personal life. How can any direct interre- 
lation or transmission of energy be conceived of between 
body and mind, which have, so far as may be discovered, 
apparently no localized points of contact or quantitative 
connections ? 

Now, it should be kept in mind as we have already in- 
sisted, that whether we can conceive or not how it is, 
the fact remains that we are doubly conscious of our- 
selves both in body and mind as personal integers; we 
do not act as disembodied spirits. This duaHstic puzzle 
which we have made for ourselves is a philosophic one; 
when we have reflectively once taken ourselves apart, it 
becomes a puzzle to understand how we were ever put 
together. Whatever our Hfe hereafter may prove to be, 
we exist here and now as embodied wholes. The per- 
sonal integration of mind and body is possible because it 
has been done. It is the heritage of our being from na- 
ture, however philosophers may seek to divide our in- 
heritance. From the failures of philosophers to under- 
stand this dual unity of being, and the scepticisms result- 
ing from them, it is well to return again and again to our 
knowledge in experience that we do so think and live and 
have our being. 

Accepting thus at its face value this primal fact of our 

^Principles of Psychology, vol. I., p. i8o. 



THE RELATION OF BODY AND MIND 117 

experience of our personal unity, we turn now to con- 
sider some views of the relation of body and mind, which 
are still extant in the philosophic field, which should not 
be passed by unnoticed in our inquiry. 

One view is the so-called double-aspect theory. Mind 
and body, it has been held, are two aspects of the same 
entity. Looked at from one side, it is physical; viewed 
from the other side it is mental; body and mind aUke are 
manifestations of one and the same substance. This is 
but throwing a bridge of words over the duahsm between 
the two; the one substance is unknown save through 
these manifestations, which remain as opposite as ever. 
The gap is concealed, not closed. And the further diffi- 
culty is added of conceiving what the substance is that 
can have this double aspect. The double-aspect theory 
has been brought into psychology from metaphysics; it 
can hardly be said to be a native growth in the psycho- 
logical field. It comes from the monism of Spinoza; but 
at this point it would carry us too far aside from our 
main course to enter into the discussion of his conception 
of the one substance with the two attributes of thought 
and extension.^ 

Another theory which restates the problem, and then 
drops it, is that of a parallel action of mind and body. 
This is now a more prevalent view among physiological 
psychologists. It is held in several somewhat variant 
forms. It is not a view for which any direct evidence 
from consciousness may be adduced, as we are never 
aware of the concurrence of brain changes with the pass- 
ing of a thought through our minds; but it is suggested 
by some physiological facts and experiments. It has the 
merit of affirming the existence of both factors, the brain 

^This theory of late is not so much in evidence among psychologists. 
Huxley in support of his idea of the human automaton was inclined to it; 
for full presentation of it, see Bain, Body and Mind, and Lewes, Physical 
Basis of Mind. 



ii8 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

changes and the mental processes; and it does not throw 
a mere bridge of words across the dualism of mind and 
matter. It also recognizes their inseparableness; we ex- 
ist as both. It conceives of body and mind as connected 
with each other somewhat as the two rails of a track, 
running along always parallel to each other, so that mo- 
tion along one corresponds point by point with motion 
along the other. Break either rail, and the entire train 
of thought is wrecked. This parallel action of body and 
mind has been compared to the two sides of a bow, the 
inner and the outer, which act together whenever an 
arrow is shot. For a purely observational psychology, 
confronted with the task of determining and classifying 
the phenomena of mind, but hesitating to sound the 
deeper problems of personal life, this view may seem to 
be a good working h3^othesis; but when one endeavors 
to work it thoroughly out, he soon finds himself among 
difficulties. Provisionally, however, it has been accepted 
by some psychologists who are far from being material- 
ists in their philosophy. William James, for example, 
acknowledged the "logical respectability of the spiritual- 
istic position," and regarded empirical parallelism as 
"certainly only a provisional halting-place"; but he stood 
by it as the "simplest psycho-physic formula," and, stop- 
ping with it, would have his psychology remain "positi- 
vistic and non-metaphysical." ^ He tells us that he 
would avoid "various confused and scattered mysteries" 
by asking: "Why not 'pool' our mysteries into one great 
mystery, the mystery that brain processes occasion knowl- 
edge at all"? But James was too human a psychologist 
to keep his vital interest in real life from overflowing the 
limits of this theory at many turns in his thinking. 

The principle of parallel action was adopted by Wundt, al- 
though in a modified form which has occasioned much discus- 

1 Op. ciu, p. 182. 



THE RELATION OF BODY AND MIND 119 

sion. He regards it as tenable only from an empirical point of 
view. He says that it "is raising arbitrarily and in a self- 
contradictory way two essentially different forms of scientific 
analysis into an idea of unity which corresponds neither to the 
empirical nor the philosophical demand when this empirical 
principle is transformed into an ontological one." — (System der 
Phil., vol. I, p. 417; also II, p. 178.) Moreover, Wundt does 
not extend the principle of coincident action to all the bodily 
and mental processes, as it is necessary to do when it is held 
to be a sufficient principle of the relation of mind and body. 
"There is," he maintains, "only one experience, which in some 
of its components admits of two different kinds of scientific 
treatment: the one mediate, that which relates to the objects 
which are known in their relations to one another; and the 
other immediate, that which is in our consciousness immedi- 
ately given. So far, and so far only, as there are objects to 
which both these forms of treatment are applicable, the prin- 
ciple of parallelism requires between the two processes a rela- 
tion at every point. But this principle does not apply to those 
contents of experience which are objects of scientific analysis 
alone, nor to those which go to make up the specific character 
of psychological experience." And among these latter we must 
reckon the characteristic combinations and relations of psy- 
chical compounds and relations. Thus, for example, the ele- 
ments which enter into an idea of space and time stand in a 
regular relation of coexistence and succession, in their physi- 
ological substrata, as they belong to th? sensational side of our 
experience; but these physiological processes cannot contain 
anything that goes most of all to form the specific character of 
our ideas of space and time. Moreover, the two concepts of 
valtie and end are results of psychical combinations, together 
with affected elements related to them, and they lie entirely 
outside the sphere of experience to which the principle of paral- 
lelism apphes. Wundt holds accordingly that the principle of 
psycho-physical parallelism, while having an incontrovertible 
empirico-psychological significance, leads necessarily to the 
recognition of an independent psychical causality, which is re- 
lated at all points with the physical causality, and can never 
come into contradiction with it, but which is different from it, 



I20 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

and has its own fundamental laws of relation. See also his 
principles of ''creative synthesis," the law of spiritual develop- 
ment, System der Phil., I, pp. 302 seq. For example, I read in 
a book on psychology these words: "I blink without knowing 
it, and cannot help blinking." Instantly I begin to bhnk, and 
continue blinking several times rapidly, until I cease noticing 
it and begin to think about it. Now what was the stimulus 
that on reading these words set me blinking, and then, when 
I thought about it, inhibited the process of blinking ? Obviously 
it was not a sensation, as of a bright light against which the 
eye reacted; nor was it any immediate sense-stimulus. The 
stimulus came with the apperception of the word, blinking, 
through my conscious attention to the word. However the 
idea itself was awakened, it was through the idea that the 
sensori-motor mechanism was set in action, resulting in my blink- 
ing. Is this some kind of interaction? The induced blinking 
was not merely a reflex motion without consciousness, as the 
twitching of the eye in a bright light. It was a sensori-motor 
process, excited by the apperception of a word, which in turn 
was a compound of pure perception and meaning or memory. 
Then that stimulus was transferred into an action of the eyelid; 
was this transference of energy through consciousness, or was 
it only attended by consciousness ? Was the mind an actor or 
only a spectator of a process, which was partly without con- 
sciousness, yet at the same time in consciousness ? In the one 
case it would be interaction; in the other some hypothesis of 
parallelism. 

A third view of the relation of body and mind is the 
theory of their interaction. This is the ordinary, com- 
mon-sense view that the mind in some way acts on the 
body, and the body on the mind. We think that we ex- 
perience this reciprocity of mind and body in every-day 
life. Science, however, is apt to lead us far beyond our 
naive ideas of things; and this common idea, like many 
others, cannot escape scientific scrutiny. How can in- 
teraction between such incompatibles as body and mind 
be conceived? How can it be admitted unless it can be 



THE RELATION OF BODY AND MIND 121 

brought under some law of mutual action ? Any specu- 
lation that may help us visualize what is given in imme- 
diate experience, is a welcome visitor to thoughtful minds. 
In the effort to apprehend the mode of such interaction 
we soon pass beyond the Umits of knowledge of either; 
yet there is one service, though seemingly sHght, but re- 
assuring, which may be rendered by closer examination; 
it may locate difficulties and so put aside misconceptions 
which otherwise would leave us in hopeless confusion and 
contradiction in our experience of ourselves. Thus in this 
case the fallacy may be removed which is latent in the 
maxim that like can only be influenced by like. It is true 
in the physical sphere that quantities have a common 
measure, as they are all of a similar nature. Beneath 
the sequence of events in nature we put the idea of a 
common substratum or medium in which all changes 
occur. The material units, of which the equations of the 
physical order are the combinations, may be whatever 
science may take them to be — an atom, a vibration, an 
electron, an unknown x of the mathematician's symbol- 
ism of the material universe. A common structural unit 
or element once assumed, everything else naturally fol- 
lows; the relations of antecedent and consequent, and the 
transformation of energy become possible ideas, as well 
as the law of conservation of energy within a closed 
system. It all becomes a process and law of like se- 
quences, of equilibration of motions, to which theoreti- 
cally the mathematical calculus is equal. But with this 
presupposition of physical science firmly established in 
our thinking, we are brought up in the mental sphere with 
a sudden stop by the fact that a brain-cell has dimen- 
sions and mass, while a thought has neither extension nor 
substance; and there is no point between them, so far 
as can be seen, for action and reaction. 

This seeming difficulty, however, is located, and may 
be passed by as a side issue, in the following way: First, 



122 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

it is to be observed that the laws of physical causation 
and the conservation of energy are laws obtaining in a 
closed system, and hold good of the sum total of its matter 
and the interaction of its parts. But it is a pure assump- 
tion to infer that the same laws are necessarily true of the 
relations between another system of a different order 
and the closed system. Maxwell's familiar hypothesis 
of the "sorting demon" is a sufficient answer to this as- 
sumption. And one order of existence, closed so far as 
its own motions and sequences are concerned, may be 
also a part of a larger system, an order of existence com- 
prehended in another order of forces that may react upon 
it, and to which it may be pervious — a vaster order in 
which it may be held vibrating in the play of immeasura- 
ble and transcendent energies. Nature cannot transcend 
itself, but it may be transcended. Though its forces 
must act and react invariably within its sphere, bound 
together in the meshes of its material network, other in- 
fluences may be conceived to pass as ethereal impulses 
through it, their radiant energies stayed not by its tex- 
ture; their passing through it swaying it as a breath of 
air might a web of gossamer, yet breaking not its finest 
threads. Pervading these meshes of the natural, a pres- 
ence of the spiritual may be felt. In short, a system closed 
to the view of those who are within it, may be open if 
viewed from the outside. It may be penetrable by in- 
fluences from around and beyond it, which might affect 
it in ways imperceptible to the senses of one dwelling 
within it; yet this might so be without violating its own 
laws. Furthermore, in the motions of the closed system 
there may be involved influences and attractions of dif- 
ferent and transcendent order, of which from the nature 
of the two systems there can be no sensible proof.^ 

^Compare Lotze, Otitlines of Psychology, sec. 66, p. 58: "A condition a 
of a is for b the compelling occasion upon which this b out of its own nature 
produces a new state b for b, which in general with the condition a of a 



THE RELATION OF BODY AND MIND 123 

Spinoza anticipated the modern scientific fallacy of the 
closed system when he used this apt illustration of it: 
"If we assume a little worm to live in the blood, and capa- 
ble of discerning the several particles of the blood lymph, 
and the reactions of each particle under the impact of 
the others, such a worm would Hve in the blood, as we 
live in this part of the universe, and could not know that 
certain motions and changes in the blood spring really 
from causes external to it. . . . Yet the nature of the 
universe is not limited, as is that of the blood, but is abso- 
lutely infinite, and hence its parts are affected in infinite 
ways. And as one substance each part of the universe 
has a still closer unity with its totahty." ^ 

To this should be added the reflection that the action 
upon each other of two forms of energy so incomparable 
as molecular and psychical, does not present a difficulty 
peculiar to this particular relation of body and mind. 
It is the difficulty of our understanding how motion of 
any kind is transferred from one body to another — a con- 
ceptual difficulty of physics as well as psychology. Lotze, 
with his keen philosophic eye, discerned this impossibility 
of definitely imaging how two mechanical forces can act 
on each other. We see the interconnection of the parts 
of a machine, and suppose we understand the transmis- 
sion of force. But, as Lotze says, "With a little reflec- 
tion we shall find, nevertheless, that we do not under- 
stand both of the conditions on which all machine- working 
rests — the cohesion of the fixed parts and the impartation 

needs to have no resemblance. We have, therefore, no justification at all 
in putting up conditions which must be fulfilled, if in general an a is to act 
on a b. The likeness or resemblance of both gives to the possibility of their 
action no greater, their unlikeness, indeed their total incompatibihty, no 
less conceivabihty or probability." This idea of Lotze may possibly help 
to indicate the way in which enzymes or catalyzers may act. Their pres- 
ence may be a condition a of a by which b is affected. In other words, 
can energy be affected or set free by the mere presence of conditions which 
are themselves passive so far as what is affected by them is concerned? 
^Ep., XV, pp. 319-31 1. Cited by von Hiigel, Eternal Life, p. 128. 



124 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

of motion. Many words, indeed, one can make about it; 
but nevertheless one does not know at last how one part 
of a fixed body holds its neighbor fast to itself; or how it 
comes about that a motion, in which it is itself held, 
ceases, and is caused to arise in another part. . . . What, 
then, we really observe in these cases is simply the outward 
scenery in which one series of movements runs out, every 
one of which is connected with its successor in an entirely 
invisible and incomprehensible way." ^ The incompre- 
hensibleness of any direct interaction between mind and 
matter is not, then, an altogether exceptionable case; it 
is an inability of thought which arises from a general 
limitation of our power of conceptual understanding; it 
is not an obstacle located solely in the way of a special 
interaction between body and mind. It is one instance 
among others of our inability to apprehend how things 
are done, which, nevertheless, we perceive do occur con- 
stantly in nature. 

We may grant, then, that the common-sense view of 
the interdependence and interaction of our physical and 
mental conditions involves no miracle; this may well be 
in accordance with the nature of both matter and spirit, 
which may admit of ^'sympathetic rapport,''^ or effective 
adaptations to each other that we cannot clearly appre- 
hend, but which we recognize as actual in experience. 

The literature of this subject is very extensive. For an elab- 
orate discussion of parallelism from the philosophical side, see 
Ludwig Biisse, Geist und Korper. He maintains that the view 
of interaction is most free from objections and to be preferred 
to that of parallelism. He urges, for example, that the con- 
sciousness of the relation of two objects a and b in space can 
have no physical correlate. The perception of them in their 
relation is not an act first of being conscious of a, and then of 
b; but at the same time they are perceived in their relation. 

» Ibid., p. 58. 



THE RELATION OF BODY AND MIND 125 

The relating act in this perception is a psychical fact; by what 
physical act can it be represented or correlated? Physically 
only the two objects a and h are given; psychologically a rela- 
tion between them is presented in the act of perceiving them. 
There is no physiological analogy to the unifying in conscious- 
ness of that which in space is manifold. There persists, there- 
fore, a psychological remainder for which there is no physical 
correlate to be foimd left. This remainder is important enough 
to cause the whole psycho-physical parallelism to totter (pp. 
224-228). He argues against paralleHsm through a detailed 
discussion of the several philosophical views of it which have 
been held and the objections that have been raised against in- 
teraction. He urges also that biologically the struggle for ex- 
istence loses all significance if the psychical is not recognized 
as a coworking and impelling factor (pp. 241-246). Compare 
Miinsterberg, Grundziige der Psych., passim. For a philosophical 
argument for paralleHsm, see Professor C. A, Strong's volume, 
Why the Mind Has a Body. His view leads to a psychical 
monism, consciousness being the real factor, of which the brain 
process is the symbol — the phenomenal. This is Hke the doc- 
trine of CHfford (see his essay, "The Nature of Things in 
Themselves," Lectures and Essays, vol. Ill, and his theory of 
"mind-stuff"). A thorough discussion of this subject has re- 
cently appeared in McDougall's Animism; he maintains the 
view of interaction. 

The view of thoroughgoing metaphysical idealism is presented 
in B. Bosanquet's The Principle of Individuality and Value. 
He holds that in the philosophy of the Absolute every part 
and function exists in the unity of the whole — the Absolute. 
The duaUsm of experience between mind and body is thus by 
the theory cut at the root. "Mind, so far as it can be in space, 
is nervous system. . . . You cannot say that the one acts 
and not the other. There is nothing — no part nor point — in 
the one that is not in the other. . . . Mind is the meaning of 
externahty." We do not have in mind "mass plus direction," 
the notion of "matter plus miracle"; the guidance is not from 
without, but the mind is inclusive of the body, itself a larger 
whole within the Absolute. "The apparent dualism between 
matter and consciousness is an arrangement which falls within 



126 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

consciousness"; etc. (pp. 205-220.) Thus pure idealism, with 
its metaphysics of the Absolute, has this advantage — in the 
idea of the Absolute all dualistic difficulties can be swallowed 
at one mental gulp; the Absolute Whole is a universal process 
of digestion; in it all logical heterogeneities, as fast as they ap- 
pear, are reduced to a common pulp, and the process of internal 
fermentation (anaboHc and catabolic) goes on ad infinitum. 

In a recent book on the Philosophy of Religion, Mr. George 
Galloway, starting from Lotze's discussion of monads, suggests 
a modification of that view which, he thinks, renders the theory 
of interaction more conceivable. He says: "It seems more 
reasonable to suppose that, though the bare monad is the limit 
of individuality, it is not the limit of being; that beyond the 
lowest centres of experience extends a continuous medium out 
of which they are differentiated and in which they interact." 
"On the theory here advocated the monads and the medium 
form a system, neither existing apart from the other, and both 
involved in the process of experience as its ideal and real sides." 
He does not, however, follow Lotze in identifying this common 
medium with the Absolute or Ground of the World. But for 
full explication of this suggestive treatment, we must refer to 
the volume itself (see note, pp. 449 seq.). His view might find 
an illustrative verisimilitude in the idea of the ethereal medium 
of space, and the relations of the material elements to each 
other in and through their existence in and relation to the 
ethereal medium. 

Immediately, however, another and a more confusing 
difficulty awaits us when we seek to visualize the nature 
of the soul which, we assume, exists in connection with 
the body. To the most sublimated idea of the soul some 
shadow of earthiness still clings. If we would think of it 
as a substance we can hardly escape clothing it with some 
vestige of materiality. Yet how can we think definitely 
of any object except under the category of substance? 
We may succeed in abstracting gross materiality from it 
by fixing our thought intently on the idea of the spiritual; 
wemay leave the idea of the body unnoticed in the mar- 



THE RELATION OF BODY AND MIND 127 

ginal haze of consciousness; nevertheless it is there, never 
entirely to be got rid of, when we speak about our souls. 
The idea of some soul-substance is held in a certain mate- 
rial frame or setting, like the rim around one's spectacles, 
unnoticed while the eye is fixed upon an object in the 
focus of vision, but of which we may become aware when 
the attention is relaxed. Kant affirmed that substance 
is a category or necessary form imposed by the mind upon 
all objects of thought; and if this is so, one can objectify 
his own mind in no other way. 

This formal necessity of thought, however, does not 
stand in the way of natural science as it does embarrass 
a spiritual contemplation of human nature. For scientific 
inquiries may proceed quite as well by positing an un- 
known X to represent the substratum of matter, while 
that X itself may be left as a negligible element to the end 
of the scientific equations. It is not necessary to appre- 
hend what matter is in order to determine how things 
work. Relations among things, modes of coworking, 
sequences of movements, laws of behavior, the constitu- 
tion of nature — such is the subject-matter with which 
natural science has immediately to do; while theories as 
to the ultimate nature of matter, or speculations about 
its origins or primal forms are of strictly scientific concern 
so far only as they may lend imaginative aid to experi- 
mental researches. The theories of matter may be 
changed with any advance of positive knowledge, as 
recently the atomic theory of the structure of matter has 
been greatly modified since the demonstration of radio- 
activity. Such words as molecules, atoms, ions, elec- 
trons are so many marks which science puts upon things 
in order to identify the objects of its experimental knowl- 
edge; and, as Sir J. J. Thomson has somewhere remarked, 
a scientific man's creed is his working-theory. Indeed, 
whatever speculations concerning the nature of things are 
thrown out in the progress of science might not inaptly 



128 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

be called the by-products of natural science. Since a 
scientific man need not trouble himself about the value 
of the X of his equations, he can neglect entirely the idea 
of substance, although the shadow of it is as present in 
his thinking in his laboratory as it is in the study of the 
metaphysician. For the idea of "mass" is always with 
him, as Sir J. J. Thomson has said that he cannot en- 
tirely get rid of it; but his working- theory need not be 
burdened with anything weightier than a mathematical 
symbol of it, and he can go merrily on his scientific way 
until brought up by the first human question that may 
meet him. 

As natural science has abstracted from matter its per- 
ceptual characters — whatever renders it material to our 
senses; as it has penetrated farther and farther into the 
invisible realm of nature's working, and has left the 
''thing in itself" as much in the air as it is in the Kantian 
metaphysics; so science has tended to become more and 
more a pure science of energetics. It is ever in pursuit 
of the modes of energy and its transformations. Atoms 
were conceived (as by Boscowitch) as points of force, 
extension being thus abstracted from the idea of the 
atom; then the point ceases to assert itself as an infini- 
tesimal particle of "stuff," and is content to be regarded 
as a hypothetical mark for determinate change, a point 
of departure and return for motions. Identities of things 
are not, as thus conceived, supposed to be conserved in 
some substratum or substance in which their properties 
inhere; they are forms more or less enduring of motions 
always occurring. In the idea of energy, we are told, 
we first lay hold of the real, because it is the working. 
Ostwald assures us: "Matter as a primary idea is for us 
no more at hand; it arises as a secondary appearance 
through the constant correlation of certain forms of en- 
ergy." ^ Energetics, we are told, gives the minimum of 

^ Natur-Philosophie, p. 373. 



THE RELATION OF BODY AND MIND 129 

conditions under which measurableness of appearances 
can be spoken of. Ostwald, however, has wandered 
further into philosophy than most physicists would be 
willing to follow him. It is noteworthy that in this evo- 
lution of the science of physical nature into a study of 
energetics the powers of the imagination to visualize the 
elementary factors with which it deals have been far 
surpassed. In the successful pursuit of the endeavor to 
find the rational order and laws of nature's working, the 
realm of appearances has been left behind. Natural sci- 
ence is itself a sense-transcendent science. And in such 
natural transcendentalism it is justified by its fruits. To 
be sure, the discriminating power of the eye has been dis- 
covered to extend farther than we had supposed; for 
Lord Rayleigh informs us that a luminous point or line 
may be seen although it does not occupy any interval of 
space; brightness without visible extension may be per- 
ceived. "The eye, whether unaided or armed with a 
telescope, is able to see as points of Hght stars subtending 
no visible angle. The visibility of the star is a question 
of brightness simply, and has nothing to do with resolv- 
ing power. What has been said about a luminous point 
applies equally to a luminous line. If bright enough it 
will be visible, however narrow; but if the real width be 
much less than the half wave-length, the apparent width 
will be illusory. The luminous line may be regarded as 
dividing the otherwise dark fold into two portions; and 
we see that this separation does not require a luminous 
interval of finite width, but may occur, however narrow 
the interval, provided that its intrinsic brightness be pro- 
portionately increased." ^ This is as far, perhaps, as sci- 
ence can go in ridding us of the concept of substance in 
the science of energetics: viz., to regard brightness as a 
perception given in the eye, yet requiring no point of 
visibility in space. But even so, the last vestige of sub- 

* "Theory of Optical Images," Mic. Journal, August, 1903, pp. 474-5. 



13© THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

stantiality or magnitude is not lost; for the qualifying 
proviso of Lord Rayleigh's statement still keeps the dis- 
crimination of brightness from darkness under the cate- 
gory of quantity — it must "be bright enough"; its in- 
trinsic brightness must be increased in proportion as it 
loses spatial position; the eye, receiving a sensation of 
brightness, though from no fixed point or Une that is 
bright, receives more or less stimulation from vibrations 
occurring in space. Such is the puzzle of mind and 
matter to which we come at the end of the subtlest anal- 
ysis of our optical consciousness. 

We have been dwelling thus upon the tendency of 
modern science to leave to one side as a negligible matter 
the idea of substance, and to think scientifically in terms 
of energy, because we shall follow very much the same 
method in considering further the role which the ever- 
present yet always vanishing idea of substantiaHty has to 
play in our conception of the soul. We shall carry over 
into the interpretation of spiritual being and life the 
analogy which may be drawn from the science of ener- 
getics in the interpretation of the physical world. 

The idea of an individual, indestructible soul-sub- 
stance has been held as a basis of faith in its persistence 
after death. But it has perplexed as much as it has 
aided religious philosophy. Usually the idea of the soul 
is associated half consciously with some vague visual 
image appearing and vanishing from mind, like an in- 
definite white cloud. One person, on being asked what 
was in mind when the word soul was made the object of 
thought, repHed "a certain circle of soft, white matter." 
It is in pictures and symbols that we think of things 
spiritual, and the shadow of this earthUness Hes over our 
thoughts of the heavenly. 

In rehgious teaching the soul has been represented in 
varying degrees of substantiaHty, ranging from gross mate- 
rialistic conceptions of it to the utmost refinement of 



THE RELATION OF BODY AND MIND 131 

spiritual thought of its nature. Thus among the eariy 
Christian fathers Tertullian maintained that nothing is 
unless it be body. The soul has the same form as the 
body, and it is deHcate, luminous, aeriform in substance 
{De Anima, 6 seq.). Augustine shook his thought free 
from such materialism, and held that the soul is immate- 
rial. There are to be found in it only functions, such as 
thought, knowledge, wilUng, and remembrance, but noth- 
ing which is material. It can feel each affection of the 
bpdy at the point where it takes place, without being com- 
pelled first to move itself to that place; it is, therefore, 
whoUy present both in the entire body and in each part 
of it. Yet he regarded this unextended, immaterial 
principle as a substance, or subject, and not itself a mere 
attribute of the body.^ To Thomas Aquinas the rational 
soul is the form-producing principle of the body. Des- 
cartes set the problem of the relation of mind and body 
directly before modern philosophy, when he put the one 
over against the other in a dualism which it requires 
divine assistance to overcome. The soul is thinking sub- 
stance, and material things extended substances. By 
substance Descartes understands "that which so exists 
that it needs nothing else in order to its existence." The 
soul, being an unextended substance, can be in contact 
with the body only at one point, which Descartes would 
locate in the pineal gland, because that is an organ of 
the brain which is single, and not double like other or- 
gans of the brain. Upon this doctrine Leibnitz founded 
his theory of the soul as a monad, existing in a pre- 
established harmony with other monads. Monad is Leib- 
nitz's name for the idea of a simple, unextended sub- 
stance, an ultimate unit of being which has the power of 
motion, comparable to the force of a trained bow. The 
soul is to be regarded as the governing monad, or the 
substantial centre of the body, so far as the latter has 

' Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, vol. I, p. 342. 



132 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

been accommodated to it, or brought into harmony of 
action with it. To Kant the soul is an immaterial sub- 
stance, but it is transcendental, and as a "thing in itself" 
is unknowable. A return toward a more materialized 
conception was taken by Ulrici is his endeavor to visuaUze 
the idea of the soul as a kind of fluid substance, non- 
atomic, undivided, continuous like the ether, extending 
from a given centre, and permeating the whole atomic 
structure of the body, yet limited by the forces without 
itself.^ Fechter's definition of the soul is suggestive: 
"By soul I understand the unitary being that appears to 
no one but itself. ... I understand by spirit and soul 
the same being, which, as opposed to the body, appears 
to itself. . ."^ Mach gives this distinction between the 
physical and the psychical. "The totality of whatever 
can be perceived in space by every one alike is physical 
in its nature. On the other hand, whatever is immediately 
given to only one, but is inaccessible to all others, should 
be known as a psychical process." ^ 

Thus throughout the history of philosophic thought 
the category of substance has cast a semblance of materi- 
ality over behef in the soul; and because of the failure of 
imagination to visualize the idea of an immaterial sub- 
stance, thoughtful minds have been led to doubt the 
reaHty of their spiritual being, and to become sceptics 
toward themselves. 

An instructive resemblance is thus to be traced be- 
tween the role played by the idea of substance in the 
natural sciences and the place which it has held in the 
history of philosophy. In both alike it has been an ever- 
returning interrogation. In both inquiry has been brought 
to a full stop in the effort of thought to lay hold of the 
"thing in itself" — just as one is about to throw his defini- 

* GoU und die Natur, pp. 311 seq. 

^ Ueber die Seelesfrage, Leipsic, 1861, pp. 9 seq. 

' Knowledge and Energy, p. 6. 



THE RELATION OF BODY AND MIND 133 

tion over it and catch it, it flits from the logical net, the 
entity vanishes into vacancy. In both alike, in the lab- 
oratory as well as in the hall of philosophy, some vague 
image of substantiality haunts the speculative mind — the 
etherealized idea of non-atomic matter in the one case, 
and the materialized idea of the soul in the other. The 
idealist and the positivist alike are held in subjection to 
this necessary form, as Kant would say, of thought. 
Moreover, in both fields the process of research has been 
carried to the last possible abstraction of the appearances 
given by the senses. The phenomenal has been distin- 
guished from the real; the potential has been differentiated 
from the actual; the secondary properties have been set 
by themselves apart from the primary; the primary have 
been dissected from the substance in which they inhere. 
The worlds have been resolved into whirls of ethereal 
motion; the very elements have vanished into stresses, 
strains, lines of force, or whatever may be the corpuscles 
bearing electric charges of opposite signs. So the end- 
less regress of positive science from the sensible and the 
imaginable goes on and on. It requires the knowledge 
of an expert to use intelligibly the prevalent scientific 
terms; yet the fundamental postulates are found to 
work in the advancement and verification of a more in- 
timate understanding of nature's operation and laws. 
By such ideas the practical miracles of applied science 
have been rendered possible. Somewhat similarly philo- 
sophical inquiry has led thought away further and further 
from the sensible and concrete into the supersensible and 
abstract; it has put out of date materialistic ideas con- 
cerning the substance of the soul, or its mode of continu- 
ance after death. Does an arrest of faith in the latter 
case necessarily follow ? Not unless the form of the con- 
ception is confused with the reality; not unless at any 
time the working-theory is identified with the working 
entity; not unless the limitations of thought under which 



134 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

science advances are turned into prohibitions by which 
faith must be ended. Just at this point, where our con- 
ceptual power breaks down, where thought fails to grasp 
the ultimate substantiality of either matter or mind, 
here the witness of experience to the reality of both re- 
mains uncontradicted, or put beyond the range of possi- 
bility, by anything that up to this point is known. Just 
here, at the end of scientific definition or of idealistic 
abstraction, the evidence of the personal life to itself and 
its own actuality as a living part of the whole is positive, 
clear, and final. As in the early naive consciousness of 
living, so in the mature thoughtful knowledge of self, 
these two great verities abide — "I am" and *'the world 
around me is." And as the physicist in the laboratory 
need take no thought of the ultimate constitution of 
matter, so the psychologist need not trouble himself 
overmuch concerning the ultimate nature of spiritual 
being, in the power of which he lives and thinks. He 
would learn according to a scientific method what he is, 
as he discovers what the spirit of a man that is in him 
can do. Further, in this first faith and ultimate postulate 
of his personal nature, he may proceed to determine the 
methods and laws of being which are given in his experi- 
encing himself, as he may the operations of the world 
external to himself, that are represented through his bod- 
ily senses. He, too, may leave to one side, as a negligible 
category, the idea of a soul-substance, as he lives and 
trusts in the abiding reality of his personal being. He 
may locate the conceptual difficulty in the unknown x of 
his personal problem, as he works out his life in a rational 
order and meaning; even as the mathematician uses the 
ic as a symbol of the undetermined factor in his equations, 
and proceeds to find its value in equivalents of the func- 
tions or relations of factors given in liis problem. Al- 
though the physicist through his equations may never 
arrive at the intrinsic nature of that for which the x 



THE RELATION OF BODY AND MIND 135 

stands, he does discover as the solution of his mathe- 
matical logic a world of intelligible operations and inde- 
structible order. It is not needful for us to understand 
what the nature of ethereal matter is in order that we 
may learn that radioactivity exists, or that we have 
our physical being in the midst of invisible radiances from 
outlying space. Similarly, the operation of things that are 
spiritual is verified in the world of moral order. 

We have thus been comparing the positiveness of 
•physical science, notwithstanding the ultimate indeter- 
minateness of matter, with the positiveness of mental 
science, notwithstanding the indeterminateness of its ul- 
timate conception of spirit. An even more suggestive 
resemblance may be observed in the progress of biological 
knowledge. It has not by any means discovered the final 
secret of living matter, but nevertheless it has gained 
much information concerning the nature and energies of 
the organic world. A great advance was made when the 
unit of all living bodies was found to be the living cell. 
Subsequently it was perceived that the cell itself is not 
a simple, but highly complex, affair, not the source of 
life, but a pool, as it were, farther down the flowing stream 
of life. The cell is not the structural unit of the organic 
world; it is in itself an intricate system. Under micro- 
scopic scrutiny distinct centres and differentiations of 
protoplasm were observed within its little, ever-changing 
world. Its functions and sequences to some degree have 
been determined. Ultramicroscopic power has detected, 
as points of brightness, particles too infinitesimal to sub- 
tend differences of position in space large enough to ren- 
der them visible as distinct magnitudes; and thought, 
passing far beyond observation, attributes to the living 
cell determinants of heredity and constructive forces hid- 
den in the germ-plasm, from which the whole world of 
life and beauty which our eyes behold has come forth. 
But the reality of these germinal powers, and the ever 



136 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

fresh and fruitful actuality of this world of life and joy, 
are not to be questioned because at the end of our utmost 
research there remains the biological x, and speculative 
thought must be contented to pause with a symbol of 
something as yet undetermined. Nevertheless, biology 
is not tempted to cast away its positive knowledge of life 
because it finds the secret of it ever just beyond its reach; 
the regress into the unknown or inconceivable does not 
render all we know uncertain and empty of reaHty, That 
which is becoming known may cast Hght a little further 
into the vaster unknown; but the unknown throws no 
shadow backward into the light from the known. Simi- 
larly, psychology resolves the "structure of the mind" 
into simpler elemental processes of behavior, but reaches 
no structural forms which may be defined as final and ab- 
solute units of mind. But why should the psychologist's 
inability to apprehend the ultimate essence of mind put 
upon him the burden of proving that the mind in which 
he is able to state the question is not itself a phantom? 
Why, scientifically, may not a man confess that he has 
no idea of what his soul may be Hke, without denying his 
experience of himself as an identical person? Or will it 
be said that unless we can have some idea of substance 
we lose all touch with reaHty, either in ourselves or in the 
objective world ? If so, then not physical knowledge, but 
personal knowledge, becomes the nearest approach, the 
last hold upon substance, and hence the more positive 
knowledge. For it should be remembered that our con- 
sciousness of ourselves as acting is the very mould in 
which all our ideas of the material world are shaped; and 
if we break that mould, there is no possible form or fash- 
ion which we can give to a positive science of things. 
As we have observed, the first and the last element of all 
human knowledge is our experience of ourselves as exer- 
cising power of will. One can have faith in nothing if 
he has lost faith in himself. Our belief in the actuality 



THE RELATION OF BODY AND MIND 137 

of the outer world is reflection of our self-knowledge upon 
its appearance to us. If the light within us is an illusion, 
all seen in that light is as a dream. "If therefore the 
light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that 
darkness." 

This does not leave us in mere phenomenalism. Mind 
as manifesting itself in its distinctive kind of energy in 
consciousness; matter as appearing in its kind of energy 
to mind — ^these are the two ultimates of known being, 
and the reality of both lies in their power to become 
manifest. The self-realizing is the self-revealing of per- 
sonal life. The appearance of the world is announce- 
ment to the mind of its actual presence. The decided 
tendency of modern thought, therefore, is neither toward 
a mere phenomenaHsm, nor an empty idealism, but to 
some form of real idealism. We discover ourselves living 
as centres and sources of energy in a universe of forces. 
We find it to be an ordered system of energies. Such 
order and system are evidence alike of permanent form 
and ceaseless transformation; and that evinces some con- 
stant reality. Nature has intelligible coherence; there is 
logic in its order. In this sense Hegel's maxim has truth: 
*'The real is the rational, and the rational is the real." 
The natural sciences indicate this philosophic trend toward 
some kind of real idealism. (See Chap. XL) 

We have reached thus far these results from the pre- 
ceding inquiries: that mind and body are set in an order 
of interacting energies; and the energies, of which in the 
act of living we become aware, are referred in conscious- 
ness to a common centre and source which we accept as 
the self. Consciousness with us is become self-conscious- 
ness. The personal may so far be described as the con- 
stant of consciousness; personality equals the constant 
of energy, potential and kinetic, of the individual con- 
sciousness. Scepticism within the limits of our self- 
knowledge is not called for by our ignorance of the uni- 



ij8 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

verse. We are real and rational to ourselves; and hence 
we may look for the real and the rational beyond ourselves. 
Not troubling ourselves, therefore, overmuch concerning 
the intrinsic and ultimate substantiaHty of the soul (the 
metaphysics, or what might be called the meta-concep- 
tion of it), possessing ourselves in the fulness of personal 
powers, we shall go on in the following chapters seeking 
and finding still further signs to lead us into the meaning 
and hope of personal being and life. 

It is not necessary to think of a being as existing in space, 
that is, as having extended or material substantiality, in order 
to think of it as persistent, that is, as being identical through- 
out its temporal existence. It may be conceived as permanent 
in time as an identical flow of energies, without regard to its 
existence in space. Then a temporally identical series might 
again be thought of as related to existences other than itself in 
space, and, so perceiving itself in relation to them, as also re- 
lated to space. In other words, a finite progression conceived 
as ever flowing on, changing in its temporal successions, yet ever 
identical with itself, would be for its period of existence a per- 
manent entity. 

McDougall (Body and Mind, p. 162) argues that it is impos- 
sible to banish the idea of substance from psychology. Con- 
ceptually this is true. But may we not say that the conscious 
subject is aware of its substantiality, i. e., of its permanent indi- 
vidual existence as distinct from objective, or of its phenomenal 
being, although we may not be able to form a conception of 
what it is that gives to it its consciousness of self-substantial 
identity? May we not have a perceptive feeling of the substan- 
tiality of being although the nature of substance lies beyond 
apperception? The flow of conscious energy may be con- 
ceived to become aware of its flowing as the same stream 
throughout; as potential it is always itself, and not another. 
If it be asked. What, then, holds the conscious stream together 
as the same stream ? it might be answered: It is by its own mo- 
tion that it maintains its continuity; somewhat as a gyroscope 
is heldjup by4ts own circling; or, better, as a vortex ring of the 



THE RELATION OF BODY AND MIND 139 

ether is supposed to maintain a very solid and persistent iden- 
tity as a form of motion. This verisimilitude, however, goes 
no fiu-ther than its relation to the difficulty of supposing iden- 
tity of existence that is not thought of as a substance. The 
identity Ues in the continmty of a process. 

Our self-consciousness is Hmited both by inward and outward 
forces — ^inwardly because it is a self-centring circling of ener- 
gies; outwardly because held within its own sphere by the forces 
of the universe in which it has its being. In short, we know 
oiurselves really, though not categorically; in essential self- 
identity, though not in material substance. Inconceivableness 
as to how we are what we are, is not contradiction of our primal 
knowledge that we are. It may be only a limitation of our 
present partial development; we have not as yet fully come to 
ourselves as personal beings. 

It is another question whether some embodiment, or material 
substantiality, is a necessary condition or means of acquisition 
or retention of the sense of personal identity: whether some 
embodiment is necessary for its maintenance after death. To 
this we shall return later on. 



CHAPTER V 

DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 

Thus far we have been seeking for the meaning of per- 
sonal life as it may be discerned in our thoughtful experi- 
ence of it. But our personal consciousness was not given 
to us as something ready-made at birth to be possessed 
and converted at once to use, as some awareness of life 
may be given to the animal world. We have a vast deal 
to do in making ourselves and teaching ourselves after 
we have received at birth our individual share of a human 
inheritance. Our inquiry would not be complete without 
critical consideration of the development of the individual 
person. 

Of the earliest period of infancy our memories retain 
no traces; yet in the first two or three years of life the 
structural Hnes are laid down, and the individual ten- 
dencies of the subsequent development of character are 
largely determined. In these unremembered years of in- 
fancy nature finishes in the main its work of making us, 
and we begin to make ourselves. In the early hours of 
Hfe just before the dawn of clear self-consciousness, the 
secret of our origin lies unrevealed, and from the infinite 
mystery and silence out of which our brief day of life 
arose, no voice is heard, no sign appears to tell us whence 
we came and whither we go. All the more eagerly, there- 
fore, must we search the natural history of the growth 
of personaHty from the earHest moments of distinct self- 
consciousness for indications, even the slightest, of its 
meaning and destiny. 

The development of conscious personal being from its 
first observed beginnings has proceeded along two lines, 

140 



DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 141 

the physiological and the mental; and along these two 
interconnecting ways it must consequently be followed 
in the endeavor to apprehend its meaning. 

We inquire first what is now known concerning the 
growth of the brain, which may throw any light over the 
relation between body and mind. May we gain from 
modem physiological psychology any probable informa- 
tion that may help us to understand better what nature 
has been doing for us in our brains, and what with our 
minds we have been doing in making ourselves what we 
are? 

When we gather up and review the results, thus far 
obtained, of experimental psychology, the answer to this 
inquiry seems disappointing. The laboratory explana- 
tion of us goes just far enough to leave us wondering all 
the more how our brains were organized for us. Here 
the Hght fails just where we begin to see. A little more 
knowledge at this point, or in that direction, might mean 
so much more. Interesting facts, indeed, are brought out 
as the results of painstaking investigations; useful ac- 
quaintance with some general physiological principles of 
value in child education has been gained. We owe much 
to the physiologists for the information which they have 
to bring to our schools and to the homes of the people 
concerning physical conditions and laws in relation to 
mental growth and soundness, and also concerning 
methods most useful in the nurture and training of de- 
fective children. But beyond this service of admitted 
value for pedagogical ends, these investigations only lead 
us back to the questions with which we started, and sooner 
or later leave us before the same Hmits of knowledge in 
our search for the ultimate meaning of embodied mind. 
They may, however, enable us to understand more in- 
telligently the nature and significance of our self-knowl- 
edge, though they open no way over and beyond these 
limits. We naturally look first for such enlightenment to 



142 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

whatever physiology has to show us concerning the 
changes that occur in the nervous system coincident with 
the growth of intelligence. If, as many beHeve, the 
physical and psychical processes run parallel to each other 
and every change in one has its concomitant in some 
change in the other, then it might be presumed that some 
modification in the cerebral cells or their connections 
would be discovered to occur coinciding with each suc- 
cessive change in the growth of the mind. And if in any 
cortical areas such corresponding modifications could be 
demonstrated, we might have some basis in fact upon 
which to construct some plausible theory of their inter- 
relation. On the one hand we have considerable quite 
definite knowledge of the successive stages of mental de- 
velopment; we may follow from step to step the sequences 
through which in childhood the mind grows in knowledge, 
and is in time brought to mature intellectual efi&ciency. 
We may observe this process of mental growth in others, 
and from comparative studies deduce certain average rates 
and laws of mental advancement and training; and one 
looking backward over his own life can render a fairly in- 
telligible account of his education. Now, if we could watch 
the physiological side of this development and match it, 
period by period and fact by fact, with the known psychical 
side of it, many vexed questions of our theories of knowl- 
edge might be cleared up. As the result of much inge- 
nious experimentation and laborious research, what con- 
tribution of this nature has observational psychology as 
yet to report? 

In the concluding chapter of his careful volume on The 
Growth of the Brain, Mr. H. H. Donaldson sums up the 
results of recent investigations as follows: ''Connections 
between the exercises of formal education and brain change 
have not been demonstrated. It is not known how a 
year's schooling affects the central system, and it is not 
probable that we shall soon arrive at facts of this sort. 



DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 143 

Available, however, are the facts of anatomical growth 
during this period, and to these plausible explanations 
have been given. The aim at the moment, therefore, is 
to determine what limitations anatomy places to the 
educational process, and thus to obtain a rational basis 
from which to attack many of the educational problems" 
(P-342). 

The facts, if any of such significance are to be discov- 
ered, will appear as we seek for information in answer to 
the following questions: (i) What, if any, excess of mind- 
growth accompanies, or remains as a residual of experi- 
ence beyond the known facts of brain-growth? (2) Do 
any stimuli of mental initiative appear as factors of brain- 
growth and adaptations? (3) From the reversal of the 
process of development in senility can anything be learned 
concerning the parallelism or divergence of mental and 
bodily sequences ? 

As viewed from the anatomy of the brain, the cerebrum 
seems to be completed at birth so far as the number of 
its cells is concerned. But the full size and weight of the 
brain is not reached approximately until about the age 
of seven years. The encephalon at the age of three has 
attained more than two-thirds of its adult weight. At 
about that time formal education, or schooling, is usually 
begun. The earlier period, accordingly, has been desig- 
nated as the period of natural nurture. Hence any facts 
bearing on the coincidence or divergence of the two kinds 
of growth, physical and mental, during this formative 
stage will have much interpretative value. It is known 
that during this earlier period the principal brain-growth 
consists in the development of cells which were latent at 
birth, and in the rapid increase of connections and the 
estabHshment of paths of communication between the 
central areas and throughout the sensori-motor system. 
Thus the work of integrating the nervous organization 
seems to be the first task which nature gives to the grow- 



144 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

ing child. The elements to be organized, and the main 
lines of their co-ordination, are already determined at 
birth.i 

It is known that immediately after birth a general dif- 
fused state of organic sensibility exists. That may be 
regarded as a preliminary condition corresponding to a 
first stage of mental development. The specific sensations 
follow as the cerebral centres are cleared up and more 
thoroughly organized — taste, smell, hearing, and sight in 
their order. From time to time emotions appear, such 
as fear, anger, surprise, and so on; and these are associ- 
ated with certain physical equivalents, although the psy- 

^In the hximan foetus the development of the cerebral cortex has been 
qviite accurately determined. In the twenty-fourth week "small granule- 
like cells, arranged in vertical rows, and closely packed together, form the 
bulk of this layer. In the twenty-eighth week it has increased in thickness, 
the cells have become somewhat stratified, and in the lower portion of the 
layer have begun to show the full characters of nerve-cells — a nucleus, nu- 
cleolus, and well-marked cytoplasm. A month later cells have begun to 
develop through the entire thickness of the cortex, the clearly marked cells 
have become larger, and the elements have further separated. ... At 
birth the thickness is much increased, more cells are developed, and those 
previously enlarged have increased in size." — {The Growth of the Brain, H. 
H. Donaldson, pp. 237-8.) For a considerable period the natural nirrture 
of the brain of the child seems to be devoted to the acquisition of the power 
of organic control of the parts, and the co-ordination of the members of 
the body for more conscious ends. But besides these physical characters 
of cell-growth and nervous connections, and the apparent adaptations of the 
sensori-motor mechanisms for vital responses to an outward environment, 
physiology cannot apprehend, and has no means of determining, what suc- 
cessive modifications and transformations of chemical elements, or what 
physical stresses and motions may accompany, step by step, the rapid gain 
of mental capacities and the marvellous extension of the mental functions 
during the first two or three years of the growth of the little child. This is 
the period in which advancement in both ways is most rapid and most 
obvious; but just in this period of rapid development, to which Bergson's 
phrase, "creative evolution," may be most characteristically applied, we 
cannot tell just how what goes on in the mind and what occurs in the body 
are related or timed to one another. Which is first, and which secondary, 
or what simultaneities there may be, can only be conjectured. No magni- 
fying-glass can bring out the lines of interconnection. Can anatomy or 
physiological chemistry afford any clew to what during this period has been 
caUed "the education of the nervous system"? 



DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 145 

chological experts are not entirely agreed as to which at 
first are antecedents or consequents, the emotions or their 
bodily expressions. There begins to be manifested a 
germinal self-consciousness; there are increasing indica- 
tions of a forming individuality. Before the child learns 
the use of the personal pronouns it shows unmistakable 
signs of its individual assertiveness. It begins to show a 
win of its own. In the germ of this self-will lies hidden 
the secret of personal being; and from its earliest fore- 
shadowing to the highest intellectual power it remains the 
spiritual mystery of the personal life. 

Of these beginnings of growth in body and mind it can 
be af&rmed only generally that they obviously condition 
each other; but little is definitely disclosed as to the 
method or the coincidence in time or quantity of their 
common functioning and growth. If we pursue the in- 
quiry from the first period of childhood step by step to 
maturity, similar interrogations, one after another, will 
arise and be left very much in the air by any known facts. 
Thus, after the power of transforming sensations into per- 
ceptions of outward things has somehow come to be exer- 
cised by the child, after it has opened its eyes and looked 
around for some time on the world about it to be discov- 
ered, it gains the added faculty of keeping some percep- 
tions in mind long enough at least to see them mentally 
in relation to other perceptions; the mystery of memory 
already begins to work within the child-mind. It can 
recognize its mother or its nurse, and ere long know some 
things as different from others. Physiological changes in 
cells and connections, as we have observed, appear in this 
formative time, and the one process evidently conditions 
in some way the other. Amid these associated growths of 
cells and these incipient ideas, one distinctive mental 
character becomes clear: the child not only hears and 
sees things in relation to its vital needs, as when it cries 
and ceases to cry when what it wants is given to it, but, 



146 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

over and above that, it acquires after a while the power 
of perceiving that the things which it sees are so, and of 
knowing that one is not as another; things begin ere long 
to assume to the child permanent characters, and it knows 
them by those permanent forms as different from each 
other. When he begins to talk the child learns nouns 
first; so animal intelligence might possibly come to asso- 
ciate sounds with things seen. But the next step takes 
the child a long way beyond that; for he learns to use 
verbs connecting things. He is consciously relating, com- 
paring, affirming something of the contents of his little 
growing consciousness when he uses verbs, when he thus 
says something about things. What cell transformation 
answers to the mental formation of a verb? What pos- 
sible physiological moment of cell-growth may be surmised 
as coincident with this noteworthy step forward in mind- 
growth? Admit that psychologically this advance may 
come so gradually, so imperceptibly, that we, watching 
the progress of the child's consciousness, can hardly note 
when it first shows that it has achieved this victory of 
mind over matter; nevertheless, it is a mental acquisition 
which differentiates itself, as soon as it appears, from 
any continuous transformation of the cortical elements. 
Mutual co-ordination and conditioning is the general fact 
of the existence of body and mind; a parallelism exactly 
coincident either in growth or functioning is pure assump- 
tion; an equal rate of growth of brain-cells and correspond- 
ing conceptions is not measurably to be determined dur- 
ing the earlier period of the development of individual 
personality. Clearly the noun-period and the verb-period 
mark two stages of the child's mental growth. No such 
marked physiological stages are to be observed. 

Do any exact coincident changes appear in later periods 
of bodily and mental development? Are these interro- 
gation-points, which one must leave after all that is known 
of child development, points that may be removed, or 



DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 147 

are they repeated and emphasized after what appears in 
later and mature self-conscious energizing? We shall 
summarize the main facts which have been determined 
concerning the growth of the brain, so far as they may 
throw light upon our immediate inquiry. 

At the age of seven the brain has attained approxi- 
mately its full weight, the subsequent increase being 
comparatively small. No quantitative addition of brain 
matter is found to correspond to the qualitative increase 
of mental activity. But if thought be regarded mechan- 
ically merely as a cerebral by-product, how, then, has the 
output of thought been progressively enlarged for many 
years of mature life, while the cerebral mechanism is not 
increased in size ? A possible explanation is at once sug- 
gested by the finer and more complex organization of the 
brain, which goes on for some years to come. At birth 
the central nervous system as well as the peripheral is 
to a large extent unmedullated — the white medullated 
sheath, that is, in which the cylinder axis of a nerve is 
enclosed being a later development. With the acquisi- 
tion of myelin the nerves become capable of their full 
specific functioning. Throughout the period of mental 
growth into middle Hfe the multipUcation and finer inter- 
lacing of the connections between nerve-cells may con- 
tinue; thus the brain, while not materially increasing in 
size or weight, becomes more highly organized and more 
responsive to the ever varying demands of life. In short, 
the brain gains larger capacity through better organiza- 
tion.^ 

Moreover, it has become possible experimentally to 
locate distinct centres or areas in the cortex of the brain, 
differentiated by some apparently specific marks, with 

^ The increase in the different layers of the cortex and the connecting fibres 
has been tabulated for different ages by several physiologists. See tables 
in Donaldson, op. cit. ; Howell, Textbook of Physiology, and other text-books. 
The statements above need not be encumbered with details. 



148 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

which several distinct mental processes may be associated. 
" DijBferences in the shape of the cells, the thickness and 
number of the strata, the caliber of the fibres, etc.," are 
said to "be constant for any given region." ** Campbell, 
in a very thorough investigation of this kind, has succeeded 
in separating some fifteen or sixteen areas."* Another 
physiologist, Flechsig, distinguishes a body-sense area as 
having a different structure from a motor area, and also 
a visual sensory from a visuo-psychic area. In the ante- 
rior "association areas," which lie in close connection with 
the body-sense area, and which consequently may be in- 
timately associated with the organization of experiences 
based upon internal sensations, he finds "the possible base 
in the brain from which may arise the conception of in- 
dividuality — the self as distinguished from the external 
world." This, no doubt, might afford an easier seat for 
the soul than the pineal gland ! The suggestion is at 
least interesting as showing how closely a scientific inves- 
tigator may presume it to be possible to trace the connec- 
tion between the brain and the mind. But at the nearest 
point of contact, where science must give up the trail, 
the hopelessness of the pursuit of the soul in the direction 
of the material becomes most evident. When we seem 
to come closest to it, we find ourselves further than ever 
from it. No anatomist's hand may open, no microscope 
can disclose any last retreat and secret abiding-place of 
the mind in the body. It is significant, although some 
scientific investigators overlook this aspect of their ex- 
perimental results, that in Flechsig's conclusions the no- 
tion of mental action as an accompaniment or parallel ac- 
tion of the brain has unconsciously perhaps disappeared; 
and his statement implies some kind of interaction be- 
tween the areas which he has distinguished and the "con- 
ception of individuality." Antecedent brain conditions, 
and combinations of several such precedent conditions, 

1 Howell, Textbook of Physiology, 6th ed., p. 229. 



DEVELOPMENT OP PERSONALITY 149 

have something to do with the appearance of certain 
consequent mental processes; unless the latter are sup- 
posed to appear from some other causation or fortui- 
tously. Otherwise in this h3^othetical brain-system the 
sudden appearance of a self-conscious thought might seem 
as supercerebral as the appearance of an angelic mes- 
senger in the sky might seem supernatural. 

Physiology thus would lead us to the very spot where 
self-consciousness can enter and take possession of the 
whole body. A long preparatory fuse, a final point of 
contact, and with a flash self-consciousness is touched off. 
We quarrel not with the hypothesis; but it would be in- 
teresting if we could learn just where and when and how, 
by what Hne of physical transmission of primal energy 
of nature from afar, the potential intelligence is released, 
the individual mind is set off, and we are awakened into 
self-consciousness. Somewhere in the course of the 
physiological development, when all things are ready, the 
great change occurs; some time, somehow, we have our 
hour and the moment of our personal birth; but nature 
has hidden this secret very deep in the mystery of all 
origins; and it will lie no nearer our apprehension if we 
shall have succeeded in pursuing it into a brain area than 
it does when we observe the first gleam of responsive in- 
telligence in the face of a Httle child. But let us follow 
further the lines of growth, both cerebral and mental, 
subsequent to childhood through the educative period of 
hfe. 

Training with the animal may begin at once, and it 
ends as soon as certain animal habits are fixed. The 
animal is early trained, and then Kttle if anything beyond 
the range of its developed instinctive habits can be done 
for it. The education of the child hkewise begins, but 
it does not end with the training of its instincts and the 
forming of automatic habits. Its training soon becomes 
also purposive self-education, guided by intelligent direc- 



I50 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

tion of others. Human education may be a lifelong edu- 
cation, and there are in it these two curves to be plotted, 
the physical and the psychical. Our immediate inquiry 
relates to their points of coincidence and the comparative 
length of these two educational curves — are they devel- 
oped at the same ratio in time, and are they equal in 
length ? 

We have just observed that no close identity of ratio 
or exact coincidence of the two curves can be demon- 
strated in the earlier period of childhood, when both are 
developed most rapidly and obviously; we perceive still 
less appearance of determinate correspondence of growth 
in the course of subsequent education. On the contrary, 
at such observational points where we may possibly com- 
pare them, we note all the way through life relations of 
antecedent and consequent rather than of coincident 
growths. Nutrition may now advance the line of phys- 
ical growth, and the mental education be slow; again, 
the mind may seem to grow too fast for the body, and a 
wise parent resorts to various means to retard it. The 
one always is in touch, so to speak, with the other; but 
now one, and now the other leads. And if we repre- 
sent the two growths by curves, in the period of maturity, 
toward middle life, the physiological curve is not to any 
extent prolonged; it comes in time to a full period. This 
is matter, indeed, of common observation and experience; 
but scientific research does not contradict it. Compare 
the relation between these two curves at certain critical 
points of education; at the point, for instance, where a 
logical use of words has been gained. In the initial use 
of a sound as an expression of some organic state or feel- 
ing it may be well-nigh impossible to distinguish any re- 
flective intelligence; animals use sounds up to a certain 
point of expression of animal needs. But from the time 
when nouns and verbs have once been put together on 
the lips of a child, the acquisition of language begins as 



DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 151 

an expression of mental judgments. Undoubtedly brain 
and lips, body and mind move together and work together 
in learning the language which becomes the means of 
thought; but then the mental curve runs beyond the 
other; it continues in a marvellous extension of the uses 
of words, and the conveyance of new meanings through 
new combinations of words once physically mastered. 
The words themselves are directly associated with sensa- 
tions; they are cast in physiological moulds. But lan- 
.guage in man's use of it breaks its shell, and on its wings 
imagination ascends into the highest heavens. Words, 
themselves coined in the physiological mint, and bearing 
the marks of their sensuous origin, become the symbols 
and attain values in exchange for the most abstruse rea- 
sonings and the communications of mind with mind in 
the pursuit of the ideals of the spirit. The brain at about 
the age of forty or fifty has reached its full growth and 
refinement; but the mental use of it has not half finished 
its work. The mental side of the curve continues, though 
the physical ends. 

Compare in mature life, at successive points of educa- 
tion and mental achievement, what the brain may be 
supposed to do, and what a man in the fulness of his per- 
sonal power will do. This is the outstanding fact; on 
the brain side the advancement, so long as there is any 
to be observed, appears in the perfecting of the adjust- 
ments of an existing mechanism, the tuning up, as it were, 
of its keys, in obtaining the utmost speed and accuracy 
from it; on the other, the mental, side the range of activi- 
ties and the number of combinations of the elements of 
experience, the working them up, as it were, into endless 
varieties of mental patterns and colors, are indefinitely 
enhanced. In response to stimulations the pulsations of 
the heart may be quickened; the blood may revivify the 
nerves; the cerebral cells may be stimulated to utmost 
functioning; yet all this physiological excitation will be 



152 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

held within the well-worn ways of neural communication, 
and the fixed metes and bounds of the cerebral cells which 
are no more in number and no larger than they were in 
earlier years. Up to a certain time of life the cells be- 
come more capable of intricate and subtle permutations 
of their elemental chemistry, although fixed and deter- 
minate in their sequences and order; but, when these 
means are all fully fashioned and made subject to its con- 
trol, the mind still moves on, and its thoughts become 
high as the heavens and more than the stars in number. 
In its unceasing growth and expanding knowledge, per- 
ceptions, memories, ideas, judgments, reasonings, ideals, 
affections, purposes reaching through the years and be- 
yond death become its ripeness and richness of experience 
and evince its unfailing power of creative Hfe; the world 
in which the thoughts of man's heart dwell becomes the 
ever-present yet transcendent reality, in comparison with 
which earthly things may seem but as passing shadows. 
This vast excess of mental growth, this superabundance 
of spiritual life, is evidence of an inexhaustible and inex- 
tinguishable meaning of the mature personal life. In this 
lifelong education and increase the mental overlaps the 
physical, the spiritual outruns the natural; the flood of 
memories were enough to overflow the brain-cells, and the 
sensori-motive or association centres would seem over- 
taxed beyond computation to contain and order the ever- 
changing play and ceaseless succession of the thoughts 
and intents of the mind and heart. 

It may be replied that there are an indefinite number 
of cells, developed and undeveloped, in the ripe brain, and 
when we consider that these are composed of particles of 
ultramicroscopic refinement, these cells may be capable 
of permutations which reach into the mathematical in- 
finite. Would not these permutations, then, be conceiva- 
bly equal to an indefinite number of mental changes? 
But the point just now made is not that the brain sub- 



DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 153 

stance may not be capable of indefinitely responsive vi- 
bration to the uses of the mind; it is the fact that the 
process of brain organization has not proceeded in any 
measurable ratio or continuous paralleHsm with the in- 
crease of mental capacity and range of activity, and that 
the divergence becomes more apparent the longer man 
continues to grow in wisdom and knowledge; and also, 
if we seek to compare the two processes of growth at any 
one point, with regard to increase in any particular mental 
power, there is no such mensuration possible. Further- 
more, an attempt to express one in terms of the growth 
of the other involves us in unthinkable propositions. 
Even if we take pains to avoid the crude expressions in 
which some recent psychologists with biological inexact- 
ness speak of memories as stored, or imprinted on the cell 
substance, and if we try to conceive of the total function- 
ing of the cells as dynamically as we may; even so, the 
supposition that the brain is mechanically adequate to 
the task thus hypothetically imputed to it offers much 
resistance to our power of scientific imagination. Berg- 
son's criticism has force, when he lays emphasis upon the 
amazing consequences of supposing that auditory images 
are formed and stored in the brain. In that case there 
would be thousands of images for each single word, as 
there are numberless times and inflections in which it may 
be heard; or if we seek to simplify the matter by suppos- 
ing an auditory diagram of a word consisting of certain 
intercerebral arrangements, how, he urges, could there 
be a common measure between that and the sounds fall- 
ing upon the ear in never-identical cadences and differ- 
ences of voice. "How could there be a common measure, 
how could there be a point of contact, between the dry, 
inert, isolated image and the Hving reality of the word 
organized with the rest of the phrase?" ^ But this is 

''■Matter and Memory, p. 148. So also Wundt, Human and Animal 
Psychology, pp. 448 seq. 



154 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

only one of the countless mental images which are to find 
lodgment, and somehow to be stored away in the hiding- 
places of the cerebral cells; an indefinite multitude of im- 
pressions are presented in each sound of the ear, in every 
glance of the eye; and these are ever repeated and modi- 
fied in the thoughts that flit hke passing shadows across 
the field of consciousness. Even an indefinite number 
of the microscopic ceU particles would seem to be swamped 
by the overplus of the immeasurable multitude of the 
thoughts of the mind. Thus we seem brought back once 
more to the ground of common sense, and led to assume 
our first impression of action and interaction of our bodies 
and our minds. 

Is it said that this naive common-sense conclusion in- 
volves impossible action of matter and mind? But the 
life that grows and comes to self-realization in this two- 
fold relation and responsiveness itself denies by its very 
existence any philosophic denial of its actuahty. This 
difl&culty we have already shown to arise from the fallacy 
of the closed system (p. 122). Our little-known circle of 
nature in relation to nature as a whole may be like a 
single cell in responsive relation to its environment; and 
the intermolecular motions and the laws of its contents 
may be subject to influences from far and near. 

If we avoid the fallacy of the closed system in our search 
for the meanings of things, we shall escape also the mis- 
take of confusing scientific or logical contradiction with 
impossibility merely in our conceptions of things. The 
former may be ultimate and absolute; the latter is rela- 
tive and variable. The one is a rational impossibility; 
the other is an imaginative difficulty. To say in the one 
case it is impossible, is to affirm that under the given 
conditions, within the known relations, such and such 
consequences must follow, and no others are admissible. 
To say in the second case that it is impossible, is only to 
declare ourselves incapable of understanding how certain 



DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 155 

facts or supposed relations can exist. To assert the sci- 
entifically impossible would involve a collision and mu- 
tual destruction of known factors. To admit the concep- 
tual impossible may involve only a collision of inadequate 
ideas about things and not a necessary incompatibility 
of things themselves. The modern mind, while impatient 
of speculative ideas, is not inclined to limit the possibili- 
ties of nature to present scientific formulations of natural 
laws. The advances of knowledge beyond all limits 
hitherto supposed to be impassable, has opened up the 
whole system of things to possibiHties of unseen and im- 
measurable influences from beyond our utmost outlying 
knowledge; natural science thus brings aid to spiritual 
faiths by the very fact that it defines more strictly its 
own limits while such demarcation of them at the present 
bounds of ascertained knowledge leaves the possibilities 
of human Hfe on all sides wide open. All that science 
has to assert is that if there is a spirit within the universe, 
and if there is a spiritual presence in the body, it must 
work naturally in both. An unknown factor in evolution 
is to be provisionally, at least, admitted, where known 
factors are not sufl&cient to account for observed phe- 
nomena. An overplus of effects requires an enlargement 
of causative conditions. Mind is an active principle to 
be reckoned with where physiological elements cannot be 
stretched to comprise the work which the human organism 
does. It is the assertion of the presence in evolution of 
an elementary factor not to be explained by the evolution 
itself. We recognize the movement, the elan, the spirit 
of life, ever new and free, within the whole. The thought 
thrown out in this seeming paradox, "creative evolution," 
is not a return to the old mechanical argument of a first 
cause; it penetrates deeper into the nature of causation, 
and it reaches further in its apprehension of the inter- 
relations of things natural, human, and divine; for it is a 
conception of the permeability of any one part of the 



156 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

system to the influence of the system as a whole; of the 
openness of the lower to the higher, and of the effectual 
presence of the spiritual within the natural. In other 
words, it acknowledges the immanence of the transcendent 
in the material, of mind in man, and of something diviner 
in man and throughout nature. And the transcendent 
as naturally immanent is active, directive, and purposive, 
yet without interference with the laws along which, as 
lines for its own energy, it moves and works, without 
breaking the subtlest thread of the network of the material 
texture of things. 

Thus far we have been searching into the relations of 
mind and body during the period of the growth and matur- 
ing of both; but it still remains for us to inquire concern- 
ing the later period when the processes of growth are re- 
versed and old age comes on. 

Reversibility is a character of physical processes; en- 
ergy may be transformed backward as well as forward 
under the control of the experimenter. Now, if mental 
growth is but a physical process it should naturally ex- 
hibit similar reversibility. If it runs in exact parallelism 
with brain changes, this coincidence should be manifest 
throughout the whole lifetime, from birth to maturity, 
and from maturity through the last years of declining 
life. Run fast or slow, wound up or running down, the 
two clocks should keep the same beat and mark the 
same time. Is this even approximately the case ? Does 
the senescence of the brain and that of the mind 
coincide ? 

It is matter of common observation that in the period 
of advancing age, as well as of youthful maturing, body 
and mind are very intimately related, and neither inde- 
pendent of the other. Weakening of the sensori-motor 
mechanism may involve some corresponding limitation 
of mental activity, and the mind in such physical condi- 
tions must become more dependent on the perceptions 



DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 157 

of other persons. The grasp of mental attention may be 
relaxed as the cerebral centres lose control of the neural 
connections of the brain. Some mental activities may be 
inhibited entirely by breaks in sensory nerves that are 
in connection with centres of the cortex. And when par- 
tially unrestrained by the physical organization the mind 
may wander as in a dream. When such separation be- 
comes entire the mind loses all power of manifesting the 
energies which it has evinced during Hfe, and disappears 
in what other modes or relations of energy no science can 
discover. But when we observe more critically the gen- 
eral correspondence between bodily decay and mental de- 
cadence, we cannot fail to notice also certain degrees of 
disparity between them, and some indications appear of 
a relative independence of the activity of the mind which 
do not coincide exactly with the contemporary conditions 
of the brain. Here likewise, as we have found it to be 
the case during the period of growth, the two curves, the 
physical and the psychical, at many points do not corre- 
spond. It is beyond question that the cessation of 
physical growth does not mark necessarily an end of 
mental development. The mental powers keep on ex- 
panding and become more fruitful often for years after 
the physical roots of Hfe have begun to decay. In later 
life the state of the brain is characterized by some shrink- 
age of the cells, and also by more pigmented cells; the 
brain is apparently not so capacious or clear; but the mind 
is enlarged and its ideas may be clarified. A correspond- 
ing diminution of the higher kinds of thinking power does 
not foUow the regressive signs in the structure of the cer- 
ebrum with even an approximative ratio of decline. It 
is also noticeable that when the deterioration of the neural 
and cerebral mechanism has gone so far as to result in 
dulled sensations and paralyzed motions, even to the 
last breath of Ufe, the mind may shine out for moments 
as brightly as ever in flashes of wit, or rise to serene im- 



158 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

aginations of things unseen and supernal. In many in- 
stances the spirit has seemed to flame up anew at the very 
moment when the body was reduced at last to dust and 
ashes. This is not what might be expected on the hy- 
pothesis of an identity or of parallehsm of body and 
mind; it seems more hke a release of spirit from physical 
limitations, shattering them as it escapes. 

There are several other points in which these two 
curves in the descending period of life cannot be drawn 
true to each other. This is the case where we might 
have the least reason to expect it — in the loss of memory. 
We have observed that in memory, which is directly in- 
volved in sense-perception, there is given a direct con- 
tact between mind and matter. At this point the lines 
are connected between the material and the mental 
world. It is not at all surprising, then, that our memo- 
ries are so directly dependent upon our physical con- 
ditions. We remember at some times more easily than 
at others. We cannot find the words we want for our 
thoughts so well when we are very tired. On the other 
hand, a sense-perception may bring to mind a host of 
memories. They will come back, swiftly passing multi- 
tudes of them, some joyous, bearing banners, others 
silently, with meanings too deep for words — as when we 
revisit familiar places, walk the old paths, survey the 
scenes of our youth, or pause at the gate of the home of 
our childhood. A single object, one of the many on 
which the eye may fall — a tree, a well, a bit of garden 
patch, a familiar window — ^it is enough to make us chil- 
dren again; we hear once more words spoken in far-off 
days, we see faces that years before we looked upon, and 
now can see no more. Thus swiftly, and with wondrous 
change, we pass from the material into the spirit world; 
a mere suggestion to the eye, and the mind sees a picture 
which time cannot destroy. 

In a purely physiological theory of memory, how do the 



DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 159 

cell-phenomena and these mental facts match? Doubt- 
less many fit; but others do not fall so easily into the 
physiological scheme. The oscillation of Ufe between de- 
pendence and independence of the senses at just this 
point of memory-contact, is one of the observational evi- 
dences of the influence of some disturbing force in the 
physical sequence. This fluctuating Hne of memory — 
one moment quiescent, another vibrating with swiftly 
passing recollections— indicates the tension of two dif- 
ferent kinds of energy, the unstable equilibrium of two 
forces of being; it evinces at one moment the control of 
the material over the mental, at another the mastery of 
the immaterial in our living and intensest personal life. 
Memory is the quivering line of vital unity of mind and 
body. A recollection is not a simple thing, either a state 
of matter in a brain-cell or an image latent in the mind; 
it is a joint act and a conscious re-living in the present 
experience of what alike in body and mind has once 
actually been lived in the past. 

The physical element involved in memory, whatever 
it may be, is a condition, but not the act of remembering. 
That involves a mental effort; attention is fi:xed in the 
direction whence a vanished image may be recalled. The 
field of consciousness is searched, as one would throw a 
light here and there in the endeavor to find something 
lost; and there is an act of recognition when the lost is 
found. Not only, on the one hand, in the act of recollect- 
ing is it true that a sense-impulse, which has been trans- 
mitted possibly to the association areas of the brain, may 
set a whole train of thought in motion; equally, on the 
other hand, a thought in motion may set a whole area of 
brain-cells quivering. But their excitement, however oc- 
casioned, would not issue in a distinct recollection with- 
out some coincident mental act of recognition. Again 
at this point the relationing action, the comparing energy 
of the psychical part of us comes into play; without that 



i6o THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

no memory proper could ever be formed. A memory 
thus may be called an act of creative evolution. 

It has been said that the phenomena of forgetting are 
the aspects of memory needing most to be explained. In- 
stincts last as long as life. Animal habits once fixed are 
permanent. Heredity, reduced to the microscopic de- 
terminates of the germ-plasm, resists outward mutation. 
Nature, outside of mind, does not forget. With us memory 
is a reversible process. We have power to win memories 
from Hfe, and likewise to leave them forgotten behind us. 

Many interesting, perplexing, and at the same time 
illuminating facts present themselves in abnormal lapses 
of memory, such as cases of the loss of memory from 
cerebral injuries. The pathology of memory has become 
a special branch of late in experimental psychology. In 
such instances disturbances and losses of memory have 
been demonstrably connected with cerebral changes or 
injuries, as in various forms of aphasia, or when, as a 
consequence of pathological conditions, the sense of 
personal continuity has been interrupted for consider- 
able periods of time and again recovered. Hence, it 
may be asked: How can there be anything but a complete 
dependence of consciousness upon conditions of the 
brain when memories may be lost from an injury, or the 
thread of personal identity be broken by a blow? Such 
dependence of mind on brain does not by any means 
prove identity, and critical analysis of the phenomena 
of forgetfulness, both moral and pathological, forbids us 
from jumping to any such hasty conclusion. The same 
facts which show a coincidence of some cerebral changes 
with memory-changes present, also, on more thorough 
inquiry some appearances which it is difficult to account 
for on any theory of the identity of consciousness with 
cerebral conditions. 

Consider closely, for instance, what is lost when a word 
drops suddenly out of mind. Ordinarily it is not a verb, 



DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY i6i 

or any symbol for an action that is forgotten, but some 
name of a person or thing. That is apt to disappear just 
at the moment when it is embarrassing to forget it. We 
want to use it, and instantly it is gone. What has van- 
ished is not the memory-image itself of the person or 
thing; we know what we want to recall, but we cannot 
say it. The memory-image of the object is not lost, but 
the auditory symbol for it. We may recover the suddenly 
vanished word by consciously putting out of mind what 
we wanted it for, clearing the mind for a time of our 
thought of it; and afterward the name or word desired 
will pop of itself into our mind, as we say, and the memory 
which all the while had only disappeared, but had not 
been lost, will appear unbidden in the focus of conscious- 
ness among the associations which naturally go with it. 
The interpretation of this familiar experience seems to 
be that in the act of seeking for it the mental attention 
interfered with the natural process of recollection, by its 
very tension perhaps inhibiting the neural processes from 
functioning spontaneously, and preventing the associa- 
tions organized in memory to come up in their natural 
connections into consciousness — in looking for one thing 
we saw things all around it, and so may have overlooked 
it; very much as sometimes we may fail to see before our 
eyes an object we are looking all around for. Its memory- 
group has been in some manner dissociated; afterward, 
when in a state of mental relaxation, something recalls 
the memory-group, and the missing name turns up nat- 
urally with it. There is, so to speak, a natural memory- 
pattern, and we have to see things to some extent as 
wholes if we would bring to mind their particulars. The 
mind acts selectively in memory. A memory is not a 
simple matter; it is a physical and psychical complex; 
what we experience in recollecting one thing after another 
is not a succession of separate states of mind, like the 
rapid replacement of one slide after another in a moving 



i62 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

picture; for memory is not a mechanical composite 
merely. In remembering we pass through an unbroken 
operation of mental sorting of the contents which are 
ever changing in our consciousness, and memory proper 
is the act of selecting what we want for immediate use 
from the total contents given at any time in conscious- 
ness. The physical factors, both sensory and organic, 
have very much to do with what is in consciousness, as 
well as with the power of mind to bring things into con- 
sciousness; and consequently memory has its limits on 
the physical side; but the conditions of memory, whether 
they are physical or also in part psychical conditions, 
are not the act and process of recollecting. 

This view of memory as a personal act, as well as a 
cerebral condition, is elucidated and confirmed when we 
examine the cases of aphasia which seem at first to re- 
duce memory to a purely mechanical ajEfair. In such 
cases (aphasias, amnesias, apraxias, etc.) the patient 
loses abiUty to connect the impressions received from 
one sense with those received from some other sense or 
to interpret correctly the meanings of objects presented 
to him in terms of his total sense-perceptions, as in or- 
dinary aphasia he may hear sounds while unable to under- 
stand the meaning of them. Similarly, in visual aphasia 
the patient sees words, but he cannot read them. In 
other cases the patient may be shown a bell, and he 
cannot tell what it is; but when it is put in his hand, or 
rung, he knows at once what it is. Such inabiHty to 
recognize objects, or, if they are perceived only as they 
are presented to one sense, failure to co-ordinate them 
with the other senses in a true recognition, is traced by neu- 
rologists up to the cerebral centres; they inform us that 
on account of injuries or impairments of certain brain 
areas certain auditory or visual memory-images have 
been lost or the connection between them broken. Men- 
tal lapses are thus associated directly with brain lesions, 



DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 163 

and at first glance this knowledge might seem to plunge 
us at once into the morass of materialism, leaving no 
footing for any belief in the spirit in nature or in man. 
If at a single point an absolute dependence of mind on 
matter should be demonstrated, it might possibly be in- 
ferred that the further extension of the materialistic ex- 
planation over the whole range of intellectual Hfe would 
be only a question of the advancement of knowledge. 
Such conclusion, indeed, would not necessarily follow. 
We might then have to gain a deeper knowledge of matter 
as well as of the spirit. But if it could be proved that 
any mental element or factor of memory is annihilated 
in such disintegrations of visual and auditory and other 
recognitions of objects of sense-perceptions, it might 
plausibly be said that the outworks at least of an idealistic 
philosophy had been carried. What is really lost in these 
lapses of memory? What does the progress of research 
into these abnormal phases of personal life bring to 
light? "It is not the auditory word-images that are 
gone; it is more probable that the manifestations are 
due to dissociation from the memories relating to the 
other senses." . . . "The neurologist may point out 
the missing psychic elements necessary to the formation 
of the comprehension of written or printed words, and 
refer the ' symptoms ' to the loss of visual memory word- 
images; although here again it may be more correct 
in this case (a patient) to refer it to a lesion, or dis- 
sociation, organic or functional, between certain groups 
of visual memories and those derived from other sources. "^ 
What is lost is not mental memory-images but the power 
to connect memory-impressions in a true recognition of 
objects, as well as in appropriate sensori-motor reaction. 
The experiments go further and indicate that, although 
a patient could not correctly recognize and tell the mean- 

1 Boris Sidis, Psycho-pathological Researches, Studies in Mental Dissocia- 
tion, pp. 16-18. 



1 64 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

ings of things, nevertheless he had retained a subcon- 
scious memory of them, and that indirectly through 
other paths of association the apparently lost memories 
might be restored. Thus of one case it is said: "These 
experiments indicate more or less clearly that experiences 
are actually present to the patient's consciousness, al- 
though the patient herself seems to be unconscious of them. 
The stimuli impressed on the patient's sense-organs are 
perceived, co-ordinated, recognized by systems dis- 
sociated from the principal functioning constellations 
constituting for the time present the patient's conscious- 
ness. That these dissociated systems are of a conscious 
nature is clearly seen from the fact that they are able to 
perceive different stimuli, such, for instance, as touch, 
pricking, electricity, etc., and furthermore are able to 
count and give answer to questions" (p. 53). The char- 
acter of the methods employed in these experiments in- 
dicates at the same time that if there be a dissociation 
of habitual tracts there must be an indirect association 
by unhabitual tracts; for the answers and the fact that 
these stimuli were actually perceived could be brought 
out in an indirect way, the patient giving replies of such 
a nature as to clearly indicate the presence of these expe- 
riences in a subconscious form within her mind. The 
patient, for instance, is not able to feel touch or pain 
stimuli, but is able to tell their number. The evidence 
in detail for these conclusions is extensive; the reader 
is referred to the volume cited. 

What appears, then, to be lost in such lesions is the 
ability to combine groups of sense-perceptions in their 
normal nerve co-ordinations and their proper motor-re- 
sponses. Breaks in the sensori-motor co-ordinations are 
made evident by more or less psychic confusion, a dis- 
appearance of related contents of judgment from the 
field of consciousness, while those elements nevertheless 
may have been received and retained in the subcon- 



DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 165 

sciousness; and this confusion and loss of mental grasp 
of outward reality occurs as a break and dissociation in 
a process of organic life directed toward action; it is, that 
is to say, a loss of right conduct, a failure of normal men- 
tal control of action. It is important to notice this dis- 
tinction, for an interruption of a normal action toward 
outward things, an arrest of ability to respond to stim- 
ulation in right action, is not identical with a loss of 
psychic motive power or a proof that mentality has 
.vanished where it ceases to do work. The psychic power 
may remain, though at some point it is rendered inef- 
fective by a break in the mechanisms of its transferrence. 
Moreover, these losses of memory are seen to be in- 
sufficiently accounted for solely by mechanical brain 
theories of mind in view of other results of physiological 
research. There is a diverse complexity of phenomena 
which the clinicians have discovered. The different 
kinds and combinations of memory-lesions — approxi- 
mately as many as permutations of the senses may be 
counted — compelled them to break up the intellectual 
areas into an increasing number of image-centres; while 
at the same time experience indicates in these cases not 
so simple a location of affairs, but rather partial and 
diverse combinations of several of these psychical centres. 
Hence these diagrams for such psychic combinations be- 
come too complicated and conflicting for physiological 
explanation, and consequently physiological psychology 
is content either to render a purely descriptive account 
of the observations or else to resort to more or less meta- 
physical hypotheses.^ In his acute analysis of memory, 
Bergson has given the clew to the physiological interpre- 
tation of aphasias, which in the present state of knowl- 
edge seems to be most promising: ''What the injury 
really attacks are the sensory and motor regions cor- 
responding to this class of perceptions, and especially 

^Bergson, Matter and Memory, pp. 156 seq^. 



i66 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

those adjuncts through which they may be set in mo- 
tion from within; so that memory, finding nothing to 
catch hold of, ends by becoming practically powerless; 
now, in psychology, powerlessness means unconscious- 
ness. In all other cases, the lesion observed or supposed, 
never definitely localized, acts by the disturbance which 
it causes to the whole of the sensori-motor connections, 
either by damaging or by breaking up this mass; whence 
results a breach or a simplifying of the intellectual equilib- 
rium, and, by ricochet, the disorder or the disjunction of 
memory" (p. 231). 

Memories, then, are not destroyed, but the power of 
actuaKzing them may be impaired. "That which is 
commonly held to be a disturbance of the psychic life 
itself, an inward disorder, a disease of the personaHty, 
appears to us, from our point of view, to be an unloosing 
or a breaking of the tie which binds this psychic life to 
its motor accompaniment, a weakening or an impairing 
of our attention to outward life."^ These sentences of 
Bergson penetrate far into the meaning of abnormal 
mental phenomena: "All the facts and all the analogies 
are in favor of a theory which regards the brain as only 
an intermediary between sensation and movement, which 
sees in these aggregates of sensations and movements 
the pointed end of mental life — a point ever pressing 
forward into the tissue of events, and attributing thus 
to the body the sole function of directing memory toward 
the real and of binding it to the present, considers mem- 
ory itself as absolutely independent of matter. In this 
sense, the brain contributes to the recall of the useful 
recollection, but still more to the provisional banishment 
of all the others. We cannot see how memory could 
settle within matter; but we do clearly understand how 
— according to the profound saying of a contemporary 
philosopher — materiality begets oblivion."- From this 

^Matter and Memory, p. xiv. ^ Ibid., p. 232. 



DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY 167 

last suggestion of the inhibitive oblivion-power of the 
brain some light may be thrown upon the suppression of 
sensibility by hypnotic suggestion. 

Furthermore, the general view of interaction, as well 
as co-ordination between mind and body, which is con- 
firmed rather than set aside by critical analysis of the 
aphasias, receives further illumination from what is be- 
ginning to be known concerning the restoration of lost 
mental functioning through the substitution of another 
cerebral connection for one that has been impaired, form- 
ing artificially indirect communication between severed 
sensory and motor tracts. 

Very little has been demonstrated as to the extent, if 
any, to which by purposeful training with mental effort 
an uninjured brain-centre may be induced in time to 
function in the place of a corresponding area which has 
been injured; although in some cases impaired brain 
function, notwithstanding local lesion, has been known 
to be restored. Some roundabout nerve connections have 
been made by surgical skill, and then by a continued 
process of mental attention and training the separated 
cerebral centres and muscles have been sufl&ciently co- 
ordinated to restore the lost power of movement.^ 

Looking back over the questioning and researches of 
physiological psychology, which we have just been sur- 
veying, we take our position on observed facts when we 
rest on this fundamental statement of Mr. Sherrington 
in his authoritative work on The Integrative Action of the 
Nervous System: "We thus, from the biological stand- 
point, see the cerebrum, and especially the cerebral cor- 
tex, as the latest and highest expression of a nervous 
mechanism which may be described as the organ of, and 
for, the adaptation of nervous reactions" (p. 392). "Cer- 

* See Elements of Physiological Psychology, Ladd and Woodworth, p. 243. 
Also Ladd, "A Suggestive Case of Nerve-Anastomosis," Popular Science 
Monthly, August, 1905. 



1 68 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

tain it is that if we study the process by which in our- 
selves this control over reflex action is acquired by the 
individual, psychical factors loom large, and more is 
known of them than of the purely physiological modus 
operandi involved in the attainment of control" (p. 

390)- 

We have outlined thus far the natural history of per- 
sonality from the behavior of lowest organisms along the 
lines of life's struggle and ascent up to the self-conscious 
conduct of man. From the earliest beginnings, so far 
back as knowledge may go, so deep into the mystery of 
origins as scientific imagination may peer, something 
which we are aware of as psychical seems to be involved 
in that which appears as physical: at the source of being 
and throughout life some energy seems to be immanent, 
which cannot be weighed in a balance or measured in 
equations of motion in space — an energy which is con- 
tinuous through time, but which is not to be apprehended 
by the intervals that are marked for us by our clocks; 
an energy active in every moment of our consciousness, 
and known most intimately and ultimately in the exer- 
cise of our will, which nevertheless eludes definition, yet 
abides as indestructible reality and affirmation of our- 
selves. Such is the spiritual significance of the natural 
history of the personal life. 

On the physical side it has come to its present con- 
summation in "the dominance of the brain." On its 
psychical side it has come to its supreme revelation in 
"the law of the spirit of life." These two have been 
made one in the embodied spirit of man. What has 
thus been joined together in nature is not to be put 
asunder by our philosophies; it is the higher unity real- 
ized in the common experience of personal life. 



CHAPTER VI 

PERSONAL INDIVIDUALITY 

As we look up through the course of life, standing 
at the summit of all nature's ways, distinctly outlined 
against the sky is the individual man. Personality is 
individuality. Toward individuality a tendency of life 
has been working from far-o£f beginnings; individuality 
has at length cleared itself from the earth and is disclosed 
in its full significance. Individuation is thus discovered 
to be a natural principle of spiritual evolution. We are 
come, therefore, to the point in our pursuit of meanings 
through nature where we have to consider directly the 
fact, and the interpretation of the outstanding fact, of 
individuality in the personal life. 

Before proceeding to do so, a preliminary observation 
is needed. One striking resemblance is to be noticed 
between two opposite world-views — the view advanced 
by a purely physical naturalism, and the other advanced 
by a metaphysical idealism, concerning the nature of 
things. Both conceptions alike are characterized by the 
absence of visualizable concreteness, and each runs back 
into a shadowy idea of some kind of an omnipresence. 
Positive science and idealistic philosophy meet unawares 
in an initial postulate of an undifferentiated something 
ever5rwhere existent; and concerning it each affirms, 
though in different terms, the same predicate, that it is. 
This noticeable similarity at their starting-point of world- 
views, which in their subsequent development are so 
divergent, deserves more consideration than it has re- 
ceived among the advocates of either view, for diver- 

169 



I70 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

gent views which are thus so much in accord at the point 
of departure may not prove so irreconcilable as it may 
seem at the end. 

On the one hand is the idea of an undifferentiated 
medium, lying back of all the worlds — the omnipresent, 
undistributed ethereal something pervading unlimited 
space. The subsequent appearances of matter are dif- 
ferentiations of this primal hypothetical ether — a stress 
or whirl of it, an atom, a series of elements, molecules, 
elemental star-dust, condensing worlds, living matter, 
organic species, varieties, animal features, with scarcely 
distinguishable expression, up to the fully individualized 
form and face of man — so the endless procession of the 
advancing generations sweeps on and on — before what 
reviewing presence is it passing? Thus naturaHsm be- 
gins and ends with the unknown. 

On the other hand, the one spiritual omnipresence is 
the unconditioned beginning, the absolute being, of 
ideahsm, and from its differentiation in time and space 
issue the many. In both these world-views also the orig- 
inal source or absolute substance is regarded as continually 
existent; the ethereal is the continuous medium, co-ex- 
tensive throughout the material universe; the spiritual 
essence Hkewise abides amid the phenomenal, the one 
eternal something beneath all appearances. NaturaHsm 
may thus be said to be a spiritualized pan-materialism, 
and idealism a substantiated pan-spiritism. To both 
alike the realization of individualized personal life pre- 
sents the final problem of existence. In the Light of perfect 
Life the interpretation of the meaning of it all is to be 
sought. 

From either side, therefore, we must turn to the mani- 
festation of the Life, as it is self-luminous in the fullest 
and clearest human consciousness, if we would find the 
ultimate revelation of the meaning of the world. In so 
doing we have next to note such distinctive marks as 



PERSONAL INDIVIDUALITY 171 

have not yet been observed by us of the natural char- 
acter of personal individuality.^ From the physiological 
point of view the natural culmination of the evolution 
of individuality may be summed up in these words of 
Mr. Sherrington: "The motile and consolidated in- 
dividual is driven, guided, and controlled by, above all 
organs, its cerebrum. The integrating power of the 
nervous system has in fact in the higher animal, more 
than in the lower, constructed from a mere collection of 
organs and segments a functional unity, an . individual 
of more perfect solidarity."^ This integration of the in- 
dividual organism on the physical side has advanced to 
a high degree of perfection in the fine co-ordination of 
the senses which enables an animal to distinguish objects 
at a distance, and to adapt their movements to their 
perceptions according to their needs. The "distance- 
receptors" — the senses of sight and hearing — and espe- 
cially binocular vision — mark in the more intelligent 
animals the attainment of physical power to care for 
themselves, to secure their own safety, and to act in an 
individual manner,^ This physical preparation and basis 
for individual life man receives as his birthright in its 
finished perfection. He sums up in his body the individ- 
ualizing tendencies and results of nature; he begins his 
career as a consummate individual organism integrated 
through his brain. 

We have, then, to take full account of nature's last 

^The process of individuation in nature up to man has been discussed 
by the author in Through Science to Faith, chap. VIII, to which reference 
may be made without repeating here the reasoning in that chapter. A 
dynamic theory of individuation is advocated by Professor C. M. Child, 
Individuality in Organisms. 

^Op. cit.,p. 353. 

^"The distance-receptors integrate the individual not merely because of 
the wide ramification of their arcs to the effector organs through the lower 
centres; they integrate especially because of their great connections in the 
high cerebral centres. Briefly expressed, their special potency is because 
they integrate the animal through its brain." — {Ibid., p. 353.) 



172 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

chapter of individuality as it is realized in man; what is 
its significance as an end-fact of nature? One aspect of 
it at once arrests attention: man, by virtue of his own 
individuality, individualizes the world without him. To 
his intelligence things can be specified; Adam, when he 
arrives, gives names to things. In the world without, 
objects are not separated and classified except as we 
draw lines across the face of nature and define the dis- 
tinctions between things. Nature itself is one spatial 
continuity. The horizons are but limitations of our field 
of vision, not circles drawn between earth and sky. Our 
names mark conceptual lines of division. This is not 
to say that scientific classifications are arbitrarily made, 
for they describe structural features or temporal sequences, 
which intelligence may discern and follow in what Hes 
as an undivided whole without break in its continuity 
in the material universe. Nature as a whole remains 
constant, while our distinctions of species, our diagrams 
of its forms of energy, vary with the advancement of our 
sciences, and they have repeatedly to be re-drawn. Even 
realms of nature that seem as different as the inorganic 
and the organic are found to be most closely related — 
it is living matter with which science has to do. And 
in the organic world the familiar distinctions between 
the vegetable and the animal shade off, and in the lowest 
forms of life so merge into one another that no hard-and- 
fast divergence between them can be marked. Scien- 
tifically, it is hard to say where one thing ends and another 
begins; but nevertheless our intelligence individualizes 
nature for the rational relations and purposes of life. 

To what extent animals beneath man have this in- 
dividualizing intelligence is a doubtful question of com- 
parative psychology. To a considerable degree it must 
be attributed to the higher animals, while in the lower 
organisms it may extend no further than ability to dis- 
tinguish food from not-food, or an object adapted or inim- 



PERSONAL INDIVIDUALITY 173 

ical to their existence. The difference does not lie so much 
in the range or power of definition of the senses as in the 
discernment of the meanings of things; not in what 
animals or men see with their eyes, but in what the ob- 
jects seen may signify to them. Animals may have be- 
fore their eyes the same landscape that lies before our 
eyes; but what they perceive while looking may be some- 
thing altogether unlike what we apperceive. The view 
your horse takes from a hilltop is not your view of it. 
Only in mental vision is sight made perfect. Mind per- 
ceives things in their relations; thought isolates and 
re-combines outward objects. Reason individualizes its 
world, and then re-creates it. A Platonist would hardly 
find himself in contradiction with modern scientific con- 
ceptions of conservation and continuity if he should 
assert that differences in nature are resolvable into dif- 
ferences of ideas — ^ideas taking form in things, and things 
distinguished by their ideas. 

Herein appears the unique marvel of personality; it 
becomes conscious of itself as individual, and it individual- 
izes its world; it is the one discovering itself among the 
many. In the midst of uniformities of nature, moving 
at will on the plane of natural necessities, weaving the 
pattern of its ideas through the warp of natural laws, 
runs the personal life. On the same plane and amid these 
uniformities, yet itself a sphere of being of another order; 
in it, yet disentangled from it, and having its centre in 
itself, it lives, and moves, and has its being, breaking no 
thread of nature's weaving, subject to its own law and 
manifesting a dynamic of its own. It is as though this 
texture of nature were like a thin network, unfolding in 
an unseen element, waving in every wind that comes 
and goes as it listeth, and as though at some points in 
this fine weaving of nature there had been condensed 
upon it, from out the unseen in which it exists, spherules 
of another elemental order, as the clear dewdrops formed 



174 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

out of the invisible air above are seen hung upon the 
leaves of the trees and sparkling on blades of grass; soon 
these dewdrops disappear into the air from which they 
came, as our life is as a vapor, and it vanisheth away. 
The grass, too, withereth, and the flower fadeth; but 
these personal spheres of being, slightest, frailest of all 
things visible, momentary films of iridescence in the 
light that shines from afar — they are not of the earth 
earthy; they appear from out another element than that 
upon which for a brief moment they are dependent, and 
into which they vanish away. From whence for our 
evanescent moment of visibility we have come, science 
does not know, nor into what invisibility we shall be 
changed. 

A mere metaphor, such as this, can serve at best for 
but imperfect visualization of an idea, and no imagery 
drawn from the sensuous world can be more than sug- 
gestive symbol of things spiritual. Personal experience 
is reality of life which words at best can but reflect in 
broken lines. Certain affirmations, however, which are 
implicit in the consciousness of personal individual being 
may be distinctly brought out and recognized. 

I. It asserts its worth to itself. Realized individuality 
is a positive assertion of the value of Hfe. A personal 
being, clearing its self-consciousness from all the world 
around it, comes to a sure sense, likewise, of its own life 
as worth living, and hence attains the distinctive power 
of giving values to things as they serve its life. It brings 
a new, self-made scale of values to the world; its in- 
dividual welfare is the measure of things. Nature work- 
ing vaguely, vastly for the preservation of the species, 
preserving the type, is henceforth in man no longer care- 
less of the individual. The little child soon begins to 
show an individuaHty that shall look out for itself; self- 
conscious aims, self-development, attainment of self- 
chosen ends for better or for worse, become the deter- 



PERSONAL INDIVIDUALITY 175 

minate marks of personal character and achievement. 
The natural instinct of life emerges into the personal will 
to live, and the will to live supersedes henceforth the 
law of natural selection, and is the purposive power of 
determinative individuality. There is elemental psychol- 
ogy as well as fundamental ethical value in the word of 
the Son of man: ''For what shall a man be profited, if 
he shall gain the whole world, and forfeit his life? or 
what shall a man give in exchange for his life?" 

This positive sense of worth as finally realized in man's 
individual will to live it may seem a paradox to describe 
as the natural supernaturalness of his being; but that is 
not a contradiction in terms. It marks his ascent out of 
nature into the personal. How near the higher animal 
comes to it, and just misses it, may be a matter of con- 
jecture, but nature in man has not missed it. It has 
made the spring; it has gained the spiritual level; hence- 
forth with the consciousness of worth a new era opens, 
personal selection masters and guides natural selection, 
the age of the human is to be the dominance of the ideal. 
First that which is natural; afterward that which is 
spiritual. Henceforth the spiritual man judgeth all 
things; the thinking mind, the spiritual man, declares 
to the earth beneath him and to all the world that was 
before his advent, and directly to his own serving brain: 
*'My thoughts are not as your thoughts, neither are your 
ways my ways." 

How this new-born sense of the worth of life becomes 
moralized and is transformed into a self-sacrificing sense 
of duty will be further considered in a later chapter, as 
we shall observe the significance of the fully developed 
Christian consciousness. We mark at this point the 
emergence from nature of a sense of life as having worth, 
in the increasing light of which all things shall become 
new. The subsequent transcendence of duty is not denied 
when we discover the germinant immanence of it in nature. 



176 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

2. Closely associated with this initial sense of the value 
of the individual life for its own sake is the conscious 
solitariness of personal being. The person in the inner- 
most consciousness of his being lives alone. The heart 
knows its own secret; the soul has its inner sacredness 
where it may dwell apart. Opened it may be to all the 
world without, and welcoming to its hospitable hearth all 
friendly visitors, yet it dwells in the quietness of its own 
thoughts, and in the secret of its being abides alone with 
itself and its God. Moreover, the individual knows 
others, and is known of them, only as they exist each in 
the reflection of his inner light. Direct knowledge may 
be a divine knowledge of souls, but it is not human. 

We are concerned at this point not immediately with 
the moral value of this solitariness of individual being, 
but with the psychological significance of it. Isolation 
of the personal entity is a final fact of nature with which 
genetic psychology has to do. No theory of human na- 
ture is true to experience if it resolves into mere fluid 
sequences and transient associations this ultimate solidar- 
ity of human individuaHty, as it is presented in every 
normal man's experience of himself. It is witnessed even 
by its apparent exceptions; for it underlies the phenomena 
of dissociated personalities, and in many cases is recovered 
from such dissociation. The reality of the dynamic centre 
and core of personality is the final unanalyzable fact of 
personal being. It is an inner force potent enough, so 
long as conscious life lasts, to throw all forces from with- 
out away from it. It is at once the attraction of persons 
to persons in the social order, and also the centrifugal 
force of the individual person, keeping the whole universe 
from crushing it out of existence, while holding its own 
sphere and orbit in the spiritual realm. Whether or not 
this individual dynamic centre — the power of the will to 
live — once existent can ever be annihilated; whether the 
dissolution of the body, which is the present immediate 



PERSONAL INDIVIDUALITY 177 

field of its lines of force, shall prove also to be its dissipa- 
tion, or whether it may draw to itself other elements 
needful for its continuous action — these are questions 
that the natural apartness and dominating power of 
individual being at once suggest; the answer can be best 
read in the further light of the full Christian experience 
of the inner life.^ At this point it is sufi&cient to observe 
the unique actuality of individual being in its psychical 
distinctness, as it has been defined in the following words 
by one of the earlier experimental psychologists: "Pre- 
liminarily, the totahty of what is immediately given in 
space for all may be designated as the physical; on the 
other hand, that which is immediately given to only one 
but is accessible only through analogy to all others may 
be designated as the psychical. "^ 

The individual person is a self-centred world, but the 
circumference of the sphere of personal being admits of 
indefinite expansion; without measure its contents may 
be enriched. Hence the idealists speak not without 
reason when they say that there may be degrees of per- 
sonality. There are low levels of human life, hardly 
seeming to be lifted out of the swamp and worthlessness 
of mere animalism; and there are higher levels of personal 
attainment, sunny and fruitful, of large horizons; and 
some personality also so supernal that as we look up to 
man in the highest, we can say with the Hebrew poet: 
"Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels." 

Because the individual person, the "experient cen- 
tre," is capable of ever-enlarging contents of experience, 
and of making these contents elements and moments of 
his own being, the personal life is also the social life. 
Truest individuality becomes richest fellowship. In- 
dividuality is not realized perfectly in social isolation. 
Self-inclusiveness is not necessarily exclusiveness of 

^See following chapters. 

* Mach, Erkentniss und Irrthum, s. 6. 



178 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

others ; rather it is a condition and means of comprehend- 
ing others within its own enlarging life. One becomes 
more and more himself in and through his participation 
in others, he in them and they in him. Personal in- 
dividuality is at once a power of self-withdrawal and of 
self -revelation; it could not be the latter unless it were 
also the former. At its highest and best a man's individ- 
uality is realized in its power of communion; he is him- 
self an organized unity of flesh and spirit, a conscious 
synthesis of sympathies, affections, achievements, of the 
love of others as himself. In this aspect of it the supreme 
realization of the personal life is the apostle's ideal: 
"Then shall I know even as also I have been known. "^ 
3. Another striking feature of individuahty presents 
itself in connection with those just mentioned — its in- 
calculabiUty. Where life has become individualized, it 
has become a point of indetermination. Whither it will 
go, or what shall come of it, is definitely to be known 
only after the act; and the issue can be calculated only 
in a general way beforehand, at best under some law of 
averages. Large portions of human conduct, it is true 
enough, are reduced to habits, and so far may be fore- 
known; the personal will is trained and accustomed to 
run smoothly and regularly in social grooves of ordinary 
intercourse. The individual is not expected to break 
violently loose from the larger social will which has grown 
up through the lives of the generations before him — the 

* Bosanquet has some suggestive remarks concerning this aspect of per- 
sonality: "If a man has more power of comprehension and inclusion so 
that less is outside him, and that what is outside him is less outside him, 
his own imity and individuahty is so far and for that reason not less but 
greater. . . . Consciousnesses are of all degrees of comprehensiveness. 
... In a word, then, we are to think of the individual as a world of experi- 
ence, whose centre is given in the body and in the range of externality that 
comes by means of it, but whose hmits depend on his power. He is a world 
that realizes, in a limited measure, the logic and spirit of the whole, and in 
principle there is no increase of comprehension and no transformation of the 
self that is inconceivable as happening to him." {Op. ciL, pp. 286-8.) 



PERSONAL INDIVIDUALITY 179 

social good-will which has become embodied and is 
potential in the customs, institutions, laws of civiliza- 
tion, and public opinion amid which he lives. The social 
solidarity endures though revolutions come and go. 
Nevertheless, the individual will has in it a certain un- 
predictable element. The exceptional in human conduct 
is likely almost any time to turn up. The common man 
will show power on occasion to do an unexpected deed. 
One held in honor may become a fallen leader; another 
may surprise the world by a heroic deed. Human na- 
ture, as we say, is very much the same everywhere; yet 
all attempts, like Buckle's to write the history of civiliza- 
tion as a volume of statistics may be computed, become 
unreal and unhistorical, as they miss the very heart and 
movement of human progress — the passion, the power, 
the song, the tragic hours, the defeats, and yet the on- 
ward march and victories of the generations. Such at- 
tempts fail to be real history just because men are not 
entirely calculable machines; the peoples are not mere 
masses of statistics; individuals come to their hour in 
unheralded leadership; and in a moment the old order 
passes and the new age is begun. The advancing point 
of life, as Bergson would say, is indeterminate.^ 

4. Again, personal individuahty evinces its unique 
character by its selective formation of its own proper 
environment. It thereby creates relations fitted to its 
well-being. In so doing personality does more than merely 
carry forward the course of previous animal evolution 
on the same level as before its advent; by it life, ful- 
filling the old, is lifted up to a higher plane of develop- 
ment, and forms for itself a new social order. The law 

^ Mr. C. Lloyd Morgan maintains that completeness of knowledge would 
not render the future predictable. He says: "I hold that aU scientific ex- 
planation is after the event, and that all scientific prediction is of like events 
imder hke conditions. The supposed adequate knowledge embraces the 
constitution of nature when it is finished." — (See Instinct and Experience, 
pp. 148 seq.) 



i8o THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

of natural selection is superseded by the law of personal 
selection. Under that law, and in the order of personal 
society, individuality has free play and a wide range, which 
render the world of human relations uninterpretable in 
the determinations of the pre-existing natural order. 
Inanimate nature with its indestructible matter and its 
inviolable laws is still the background of man's being 
and the frame within which the scene of his action must 
be limited; but he himself in the foreground of nature 
appears in another circle of relationships, moves freely 
in a human interdependence, and gathers around him 
the companionships amid which he becomes fully and 
happily himself. The human child has this personal en- 
vironment for its birthright, and finds in the social order 
the matrix and mould for its growing self-conscious- 
ness. The child in the cradle is not destined, as a lamb 
in a flock, soon to be unknown even to its mother; man in 
his strength is not predetermined to be an indistinguish- 
able unit in a herd; human society is not as a teeming 
mass of co-operative ants or a hive of industrious bees — 
only in a dehumanized accounting are men known by 
numbers and regarded as hands, or labor reckoned with 
tools. If not in the factory, in his home, however humble, 
each man is known by his own name, and he possesses 
his Kfe abundantly among his neighbors, comrades, and 
friends. The life of a man ought not to be lost in the 
indistinguishable herd, or amid the mechanical whirl; 
it is to be found and saved in a social order; it is born 
into the rights and the obligations of the moralized or- 
ganic life of humanity. These social relations are not 
constituted in the contiguities or sequences of things. 
By no accidental cast of molecular combinations and 
possible nerve permutations, though their variations 
were carried up to the mathematical infinite, could this 
personal order of relations conceivably have been hit 
upon, and still less established in the permanence of the 



PERSONAL INDmDUALITY i8i 

human order. For the order of personal individualities 
is not formed on a physical basis only; it is determined 
in a psychical recognition of individuals as fellow par- 
takers and joint heirs of the same human inheritance 
and worth; it is maintained and developed from genera- 
tion to generation in the consciousness of personal re- 
lations and the free action and reaction of individual 
wills in common endeavor and for the well-being of the 
community. In this social order the individual has dis- 
covered the oneness of his self-interest with the interests 
of others, and further the human society has developed 
the necessary laws of its welfare, integrated its individual 
powers, and made its own history. Animals have their 
pedigrees; man alone, it has been said, has a history. 

So far from its being true that individuaHsm must 
give place to socialism, personal individuaHties are the 
natural units of social construction. To treat the in- 
dividual value as nothing and social welfare as every- 
thing, would end in the result of multiplying plus into 
minus, nothing would come of it. Individual ethics is 
the beginning of social righteousness. The love of self 
is measure for the love of one's neighbor as one's self. 
Selfishness does not consist in the love of self but in an 
arrest of it; it is stopping at self, and not expanding into 
love of humanity. As social order, on the one hand, can- 
not be built on the destruction of individuahty, so Hke- 
wise, on the other hand, individuahty is a barren and 
fruitless thing if it is not developed in society. Toleration 
is but a half-way virtue, while faith bears its perfect 
fruit in catholicity. 

But to enter into this field of social ethics and Chris- 
tian catholicity would carry us aside from our path. It 
is enough if we glance in passing at Milton's grand con- 
ception of the state: "A nation ought to be but as one 
huge Christian personage, one mighty growth or stature 
of an honest man, as big and compact in virtue as in 



i82 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

body, for, look, what the ground and causes are of single 
happiness to one man the same shall ye find them to 
the whole state." ^ 

5. Another outstanding character of individuality is the 
increase of psychical energy in personal life. 

The sum of physical energy is constant, and within the 
known h'mits of the material universe the quantity of 
matter remains the same. This is only a scientific way 
of believing in the trustworthiness and veracity of na- 
ture; scientifically experimented with, nature proves 
true. But the history of mind cannot be reduced quan- 
titatively to this physical law of conservation; it cannot be 
predicated of the psychic world without qualification that 
the sum of its energy remains constant. On the contrary, 
experimental psychology asserts a principle of "increase of 
psychic energy." This does not mean merely that there 
may be an acceleration of the rate of thinking, as there 
is acceleration of motion in the physical sphere, but that 
there may be also an increase of ideational power. This 
may appear a surprising statement from the physicist's 
point of view; if this indeed be so, it is obvious that 
personal energy must have in part its origin from outside 
the material system, and receive influx of power from 
beyond the physiological organization in which it ap- 
pears. This allegation, therefore, of the increase of 
psychological energy in the development of personality 
and through human history requires close scrutiny; no 
fact of more unique significance for the determination 
of our nature and destiny than this, if it be an ultimate 
fact, can well be imagined. 

Among the moderns, Lotze suggested a principle of 
psychical increase, and Wundt has more explicitly af- 
firmed it. In all physical processes, so Wundt reasons, 
a principle of equivalence obtains; cause and effect are 
quantitatively equal. They are not identical in the 
1 Milton's Reformation in England, Preface to Bk. II. 



PERSONAL INDIVIDUALITY 183 

sense that they can be substituted for each other. The 
objects in a causal relation may have dijEferent properties, 
but they have a common measure as quantities. The 
psychic processes, on the contrary, in general elude 
quantitative determination. So far indeed as their de- 
grees of felt intensity are concerned, or the extent of 
their contents — what an idea may include — they may 
be compared with one another, and so far measured as 
quantities. Hence we may properly speak of degrees of 
.consciousness, and of more or less feeling and mental 
activity. The report of a canon, for example, produces 
a stronger impression than a pistol-shot, but we cannot 
measure mathematically the difference in our conscious- 
ness of sounds in the same way that we can measure the 
differences of the vibrations of the air. Our state of 
mind at the time quahfies our awareness of sounds. 
Moreover, the conceptions of the grown man are richer 
in contents than those of a little child. Our ideas are 
constructed out of simple perceptions; yet the resulting 
idea is not by any means so compounded of the per- 
ceptions which enter into it that it may be regarded as 
their sum; it is a new act of our consciousness, which 
as such always contains a creative synthesis.^ An idea, 
that is to say, is not merely an addition of things; it is 
putting psychical elements together in a creative manner. 
Thought gives form to things. Thus an idea of any ob- 
ject of sight, such as a flower, a star, or a face, is more 
than the sum of the sensations of light, of the sensory 
and muscular movements involved in its production, and 
of accompanying feelings of pleasure in color or beauty. 
While dependent on these conditions, the idea is some- 
thing quite different from any or all of them put to- 
gether; it is a psychic act and a consequent mental pro- 
duction. And in all the higher intellectual processes this 
principle of "creative synthesis" holds good; we per- 
^ Wiindt, System der Phil., I, p. 302. 



i84 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

ceive relations of ground and consequence in particular 
cases of psychical causality, but there is no quantitative 
equivalence between related ideas. "The spiritual life 
is extensively as well as intensively ruled according to 
an increase of values; extensively in that the manifold- 
ness of the spiritual developments continually broadens 
itself: intensively in that the values arising in these de- 
velopments increase according to their degree."^ Not 
only do the elements united in such mental synthesis 
gain in the aggregate a new meaning, but, as Wundt ob- 
serves, what is of distinctive import, the aggregate idea 
is itself, indeed, a new psychical content that was made 
possible by those elements, but it was by no means con- 
tained in them. This is most striking in the more com- 
plex construction of a work of art or a train of logical 
thought. 

Such "increase of psychic energy," or "principle of 
creative synthesis," as Wundt designates it, is not con- 
tradictory to the law of conservation of physical energy; 
for the two run on different planes and hold true of re- 
lations that are not identical. The latter has to do solely 
with quantitative measurements; the former with re- 
lations of being that are qualitatively given in conscious- 
ness. Forces working on different planes may have some 
correlation and possible interactions; but they do not 
come into contradiction, as a flying machine in the air, 
crossing a railway, cannot collide with a train passing at 
the same moment. But there may be signalling and in- 
tercommunication between them. The physical law of 
conservation rests on the postulate of a continuous ma- 
terial substratum or medium; the psychical rests on the 
postulate of a continuous psychical existence after its 
kind. The measure of the one is not to be assumed as 
the law of the other. Natural and spiritual laws may 
be analogous, but not identical. The psychical law is 

^Ibid., I, p. 302. 



PERSONAL INDIVIDUALITY 185 

to be found in experience of the psychical. The psychical 
processes, as thus given in personal life, as Wundt main- 
tains, manifest a principle of increase, as well as of pos- 
sible decrease, according to their own kind and degree 
of variation; they are not to be weighed in any physical 
balances, but to be determined on their own scale of 
values for life. We have given in our personal life a dif- 
ferent kind of abihty from that manifested in the world 
without; the power, namely, to produce qualitative values 
.and to measure their worth in relation to our desires and 
aims. This personal selection of values for life is an- 
other law than the law of natural selection of forms fitted 
to survive. Both work together in the unity of experi- 
ence.^ 

The increase of psychical energy is disclosed not only 
in the development of the individual but also, it appears, 
in the development of society and as a progressive prin- 
ciple of civilization. One might say that with the ac- 
cumulation of human experience from generation to 
generation the power-house of humanity has been en- 
larged and improved; the human potential, from which 
individuals may draw light and power, has been im- 
mensely increased. The psychic forces of the com- 
munity are clarified and intensified. This is obvious in 
many ways. It is true of the concepts in which we, 
children of the generations past, are taught from our 
birth to think; of the ideas which have become available 
for us in the inherited uses of words, as well as in institu- 
tions and laws — all these being so much stored up psychi- 
cal energy from the social life of the past. This holds 
true of the whole human environment in which the in- 
dividual person finds means for the larger exercise of his 
powers, and opportunity for himself to contribute some- 
thing to the fairer idealization of human life in the years 

*A confirmatory consideration might be adduced from the supposed 
"degrees of consciousness" as held by Bradley, Appearance and Reality. 



i86 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

to come. Such progressive enlargement and enrichment 
of man's life is the result of creative synthesis, and the 
increase by use of psychic energy. It is not to be compre- 
hended in the cycle of a material transformation of energy; 
it is not to be plotted as a curve of physical energy return- 
ing into itself; it is pursuit of truth ever advancing into 
the light; it is a dominion of mind in nature making in- 
crease of itself without end. 

In obvious actuality man has thus made his personal 
environment and is ever making his world new. Men 
as individuals have created a language, a social order, 
a human consciousness, a universal will, to the govern- 
ment of which there shall be no end. The common mind 
of a community, this "universal will of a race crystallized 
in language, custom, and religion," forming international 
law and world-wide humanism — all this is a psychical 
growth according to a psychical principle of mental 
progress; it is the work of the psychical dynamic of 
human history. 

We may note, in passing, some minor indications of a 
psychical influence, subtly acting amid physical sequences, 
which at present are to be regarded as unverified, but 
which scientific researches may bring out into clearer 
definition. For example, the question may fairly be 
raised whether in any degree a man can make or remake 
his own brain, or does he have to take it just as nature 
gave it to him? Some anatomical observations are 
enough to raise more questions in this direction than they 
can answer. There are cases in which mental functions 
have been recovered after they had been lost by in- 
juries in the brain areas in which they are located; and 
it is an open question whether in such instances of par- 
tial or more complete recovery some other nerve-paths 
have been utiHzed to resume the interrupted communica- 
tions, or whether it is ever possible that some unused 
portion of the cerebral hemispheres, or some awakened 



PERSONAL INDIVIDUALITY 187 

activity of the opposite hemisphere, may be substituted 
and function for the injured tract, or to what extent by 
practise voluntarily pursued substitutionary functions 
in the higher brain areas may be induced, as notably in 
the case of Helen Keller. Modern surgery has succeeded 
in restoring broken communications between centres in the 
sensori-motor tract by cutting one nerve and joining it 
to another, and thus in a roundabout way re-establishing 
the nerve-circuit. Such cases are not numerous enough 
to justify too confident conclusions; so far as they go, 
the significant fact is that after an operation in which 
the surgeon had made a new nerve-circuit, the patient 
had to learn by continued mental effort to use it; the 
man had to teach his brain to utiUze the artificially made 
connections, to do the work which he required of it. 
That would seem to indicate some direct action of mind 
on the cerebral mechanism. The conditions and Hmits of 
physiological maturity may restrict to a very Hmited de- 
gree (if it proves possible at all) man's capacity of re- 
pairing his own brain, but if a single clear case should be 
demonstrated of any such ability by voluntary training 
to cause one cerebral area or neural connection to func- 
tion for another, that would set aside the theory of 
parallelism and render probable some efficient interaction 
between mind and body. 

Another consideration not to be overlooked in this 
connection is the effect of personal energy as a new force 
entering into natural evolution. From personal centres 
new energies radiate out into nature, modifying its forms, 
and subjecting its forces to unwonted uses. Human 
selection alters the course of natural selection. The 
psychic energies are not creative in the sense of adding 
to the sum total of matter, but they are directive and 
transforming forces, carrying natural means to ends be- 
yond nature. The compelHng will is not a power acting 
upon the natural forces from without, by so many sue- 



i88 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

cessive shocks throwing the world out of its appointed 
courses or disintegrating its elemental structure. It is 
not in this sense a supernatural force; rather it finds it- 
self domesticated in nature's heart, and obedience to its 
compelling influence becomes nature's higher law. Con- 
ceive of the power of personal will in nature as we please, 
the directive control of it is evident wherever man rests 
his foot and builds his home. An embodied will gains 
mastery over the matter of its embodiment; man is the 
tool-using animal, and things serve his thoughts. Nature 
may bring him back to the dust at last, but while he 
lives, he reigns. And man, the thinking reed, as Pascal 
calls him, shows his superiority to the end in that "he 
knows that he dies." 

Individuality, as we have thus found it realized in 
man's self-conscious life, is the outcome of natural evolu- 
tion and the dominant fact of nature. To account for 
it we may start either from an assumption of an original, 
ethereal unknown something omnipresent in space, or 
from the postulate of self-existent omnipresent spirit 
recognized in our human life. Considering each of these 
views hypothetically as working theories, we have put 
them to the test at successive points, inquiring which 
of them, all along the course of nature, seems best to 
fit the observed facts, and which theory on the whole 
renders conceptually more intelligible the actual results 
which are wrought out in human experience. We apply 
the test of economy, and ask: Which working theory of 
the evolution of personality and its contents can be 
thought out with the introduction of the least number 
of subsidiary hypotheses? 

If we take the materialistic supposition, we are not 
long in discovering that we are building the house upon 
the sands. Dig down as deeply as physical science has 
gone, or seems likely to go, it finds no bed-rock on which 
to rest the firm foundations of the heavens and the earth. 



PERSONAL INDIVIDUALITY 189 

In matter, conceived as matter only, there is given no 
basis for the rational nature of things. Scientific specula- 
tions as to the ultimate materiality of matter have been 
changing since the early time of Heraclitus's doctrine of 
ethereal fire as the original form of existence, from which 
through strife and enmity all things arise, and his teach- 
ing also of the perpetual flux of things. In this present 
age Lord Kelvin's mathematical conception of a vortex- 
ring passes into the still more recent speculations con- 
cerning electrons and we know not what ethereal knots, 
stresses, or streamings. Always the shifting sands of 
scientific hypothesis underlie scientific philosophy. The 
knowledge gained by research is true as far as it goes, 
and often convertible into practical uses; but ever as it 
advances, the reality of things recedes from its grasp. 

Furthermore, along the empirical way, starting with 
the idea of materiahty, we have observed difficulties of 
interpreting the observed facts continually multiplying. 
Paths that appeared at first promising run out and lose 
themselves in impenetrable thickets — as the gross ma- 
terialism of physiological philosophers of the last century 
was soon swamped, and their crude notion of extracting 
thought as a secretion from the brain has been abandoned; 
or as the more recent theory of mind as only an epiphenom- 
enon — but an echo or shadow accompanying the autom- 
atism of the body — fails to push its way through the 
perplexities of psychology into which it too hastily 
plunged. Subsidiary hypotheses must be made at every 
turn, if one seeks to guess what the movement and way 
of life has been by the aid only of a guide-book of me- 
chanical philosophy. A pseudo-scientific materialism 
stumbles and falls over itself at the very threshold of 
personal consciousness — before a simple yet complex 
sense-perception (the unity at the very beginning of 
personal life of the physical and the psychical); so also 
it ends in confusion of differences and in a route of allied 



igo THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

suppositions until finally it has no recourse left but to 
fall back on its basic supposition of some "prepotent 
cell." Matter stripped of all adventitious characters is 
seen to be just matter, and nothing else. "There is one, 
and only one method of refuting materialism: it is to 
show that matter is precisely that which it appears to 
be."^ At the end of this way, then, we are lost in hy- 
potheses that cross and recross each other, and lead no- 
whither. All purely materialistic theories begin with 
formless matter, only, "lastly, to fill consciousness, they 
invent an incomprehensible action of this formless matter 
upon this matterless thought. "^ 

How fares it, then, with the other postulate of a spiritual 
energy of evolution ? Taking our point of departure from 
the consciousness of personal energy, postulating a spiri- 
tual omnipresence in which the universe has its existence 
and movement, we follow a way that runs from point 
to point in the same direction, and the course of which 
is marked by signs becoming more explicit and assuring. 
On either side of this straight way of life the unknown 
shuts us in, and at times perplexities thicken, but they 
never close up and render it impossible to follow the 
path on and on. At the utmost reach of knowledge and 
ascent of our reason, we are not brought up before a 
blank contradiction, although we shall be left facing 
a mystery of spiritual life above us and beyond — a mys- 
tery not of utter darkness, but of ineffable fight. 

Kant could say: "Give me matter, and I will construct 
a world." But no one may say: Give me matter, and I 
will construct a mind. "I will" is the constructive power 
assumed; and without the postulate in the beginning of 
that energy which is known really, though but in part, 
in personal experience, nothing follows and nothing exists. 

The interpretation of nature is man; he is himself the 
light of nature at its highest point. This is at once the 
1 Bergson, Matter and Memory, p. 80. ^Ibid., p. 9. 



PERSONAL INDIVIDUALITY 191 

naturalness and the spiritual transcendence of his person 
that he is at the same time the work and the worker, 
the issue and the judge of his own evolution. Of him 
it is to be said that he was curiously wrought in the lowest 
parts of the earth, and that all his members in continuance 
were fashioned when as yet there was none of them. 
He is become actor and spectator of his own life, the 
final judge of all things from which he came forth, him- 
self nature at her best, yet holding himself the heir of a 
•realm of higher worth. Aware of his kinship with the 
dust of the earth, he lives himself in a higher order a 
life that does not return to dust and ashes. Such is the 
natural significance of spiritual personahty. 

Throughout the preceding chapters we have not deemed 
it serviceable to faith to suppose that gaps in nature are 
necessary in order that spirit may come in. Consequently 
we have not been concerned to find the distance between 
inorganic and Hving matter narrowed by increasing knowl- 
edge of both; the distinctive character of each, however, 
closely allied in their origins, remains more significant 
than ever. Neither have we deemed it essential for 
valuation of man in his spiritual dominance to draw a 
hard-and-fast line across the process of the evolution of 
mind between animal and human intelligence; the result 
of the process, the value finally attained, is the evidence 
of man's spiritual dominion. Nothing is to be gained, 
and much would be lost, in the estimate of the intrinsic 
worth of human nature by supposing it to be absolutely 
foreign to all the nature in the midst of which it has 
come to its fruition. The classic saying, "I am a man 
and think nothing human foreign to me," is to be held 
true not only of human nature, but of all nature; I am 
a man and consider nothing natural foreign to me. These 
two strands, the physical and the psychical, have been 
interwoven in nature from the beginning of days; they 
are not to be disentangled from the warp of our being. 



192 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

The natural and the spiritual have gone together and 
belong together; they are made one in hfe, and death 
itself shall not divide them. Far down as eye can see 
into the origins of things, far on as hope may gaze into 
the mystery of our destiny hereafter, these two, nature 
and spirit, go ever together in history and the prophecy 
of our creation, and without either the other would not 
be made perfect. 

The objection once commonly raised, but now lingering 
only as an inherited popular prejudice, that a biological 
view of man's genesis reduces him to the level of the beasts, 
rtiay without further consideration be dismissed as super- 
fluous. But a real obstacle to a reasonable faith is raised 
when, on either side, the fact of man's twofold nature, as 
it has been fashioned through a continuous evolution, 
is questioned. Not the denial of evolution but unbelief 
in the unity of the natural and the spiritual is the vitiating 
falsehood ahke of science and of faith. It were indeed 
a betrayal of personaHty to doubt the existence of either 
in the reality of the whole. Let either vanish and the 
other goes. We know ourselves in distinction from the 
world without. Annihilate knowledge of the existence 
of the external world, and there is nothing left to bring 
us to consciousness of ourselves. Or if we reduce to a 
passing shadow our personal being, the whole material 
world also is as a shadow that passeth away. One might 
as well imagine the canvas to be burned up, and yet the 
forms and colors, and actuality of the painting to abide, as 
to conceive of nature and meaning, matter and form, body 
and mind as existing in absolute apartness, without mu- 
tual relation, the subject having no object, and the ob- 
ject no existence except as thought by the subject. The 
only analogy to supposed spiritual existence in absolute 
isolation from outward nature which our experience might 
suggest, would be the loss of consciousness in a dream- 
less sleep that would be without awakening. 



PERSONAL INDIVIDUALITY 193 

It can be added that it is in keeping with the profound 
unity of nature and spirit that our modern age, which is 
above all things scientific, is also more than others the 
age of the poetic interpretation of nature. It is striking, 
although on this view very natural, that the poetry of 
the scientific age should be a poetry in profound sym- 
pathy with outward nature, and that, so far from science 
banishing poetry, imagination is recovering spiritual 
meanings in natural objects. Modern poetry is a fresh, 
human interpretation of nature, and, more than ever 
before in the thoughts of men's hearts, out of doors are 
sung the songs of the spirit. 

The question lingers with us, often nature itself seems 
to ask it of us: In our nature-feeling is there any real 
recognition of a common kinship of the spirit in nature? 
In other words, is our modern poetry of nature a reflec- 
tion of our human feeling thrown back upon us from 
nature, or is it a revelation of some spiritual reality alike 
in nature and ourselves? Is it but an echo of our inner 
voice, or is it a word responsive to us, the meaning of 
which we are to interpret? 

The Unes of thought thus far followed would incline 
us toward the latter view. As, on the one hand, we have 
been led away from any identification of the personal 
life with objective nature, so, on the other hand, we are 
not left with a conclusion in which the material is lost 
by absorption in the spiritual, or else a soul or plurality 
of souls is attributed to nature. Philosophical analysis 
may discriminate the following points: (i) Nature and 
we are complementary elements constitutive of a reality 
which is comprehensive of both. (2) The relationship 
is one of mutual fitness. It is not a one-sided projection 
of the self into nature (as in naive efforts to personify 
or render outward objects like ourselves) ; it is a realiza- 
tion in and through self-knowledge of what nature in 
its essential being and meaning is. Hence the idealists 



194 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

may say: Nature comes to itself in us. Its end in the 
realm of ends is realized in our intelligent appreciation 
and love of it. And we likewise cannot come fully to 
ourselves, cannot realize the ideal ends of personal life, 
apart from and without love of nature. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE FULFILMENT OF PERSONAL LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST 

Jesus is the fascination of history; all men are drawn 
to him. St. John's saying concerning the number of books 
that might be written of him, does not seem an exag- 
geration in view of the numberless lives of Christ that 
have been written; where in all the literature of the 
world are there not to be found reflections of his light? 

The more recent views of Jesus have been historical 
rather than theological, critical rather than doctrinal. 
Modern writers have searched diligently to know what 
manner of man Jesus was. One way of approach, how- 
ever, to his unique personality has hardly been attempted, 
yet it opens a view of the Person of Christ and his in- 
fluence which our scientific age may gain for itself as men 
have not so seen him in times past. It is the way of ap- 
proach through nature to Christ. Pursuing the line of 
interpretation of personal life which we have thus far 
followed from sign to sign of nature's meaning, we would 
draw near the supreme Person of Christ, and behold him 
as the fact of supernal significance in nature. 

Personality has entered into this world as an idealizing 
energy; it has shown itself to be a transforming and 
re-creative power embodied in nature, and working in 
ever-widening radiation through human history. When 
in the fulness of time the Christ was come, the life was 
manifested; in him and through him the personal life 
is manifested in its inmost meaning and furthest in- 
fluence. In the Christ and the world of his creation we 
have to do with the full energy and utmost possibilities 
of our human nature and destiny. 

19s 



196 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

In this method of apprehending the Christ, and our 
life through his, we shall have to avail ourselves of all 
possible aid from historical studies as well as of what- 
ever light modern psychology may throw upon the in- 
terpretation of the Christian consciousness, which bears 
witness of him. Personality is to be finally interpreted 
in the light of the Christ of nature, the Christ of history, 
and the Christ of experience. When we isolate from each 
other these three primary aspects of the Person of Christ, 
we break the perfect manifestation of the Life which is 
the Light of the world. The energies of the spirit are re- 
vealed in the natural preparation, the historical manifes- 
tation, and the abiding influence of Christ; only through 
the synthesis in our faith of these three witnesses to the 
Christ, may we apprehend the revelation in his person 
of the full meaning of our personal life. 

When we begin the inquiry, what natural preparation 
may there have been for such personality as has been 
realized in Christ, we have at the outset to take into 
account the possible range of the natural development 
of the higher human life. We may not say, such a mani- 
festation of life as the Christian world believes that Jesus 
lived is impossible, unless we can fix limits to the personal 
power of life prior to actual experience; not what we 
may think life may do, but what life does, can determine 
its possibilities. Personality is too vast, too unlimited, 
too mysterious, to be held within the confines of our im- 
mediate knowledge — for us to say where its power must 
end. It is a pure assumption also to limit by present 
knowledge the possible energy of personal life in its in- 
fluence upon its environment, and its mastery of ele- 
mental forces for its own survival and ideal ends of being. 
No man knows that any other power in the universe shall 
be able utterly to destroy the personal will to live. For 
all we know to the contrary, a human will to live may 
prove stronger than a host of bacteria, though worms 



PERSONAL LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST 197 

destroy this body. Our knowledge of ourselves and the 
universe, although ever advancing, discovers no final 
limits to the dominance among material forces of the 
spirit that is in man. It is then with the actual dynamic 
of the Christ in the life of the world that we have to do. 

We have learned that personal life in every new-born 
child comes as a fresh influx of power into the course of 
nature, not indeed breaking its continuities, but using 
them for ends beyond themselves. We have observed 
that personal life has manifested the potency of an ever 
larger and richer development. We have marked de- 
grees of consciousness on an ascending scale; just above 
the absolute zero of self-consciousness the primitive man 
arose; then followed the cave-dwellers in some indef- 
initely distant age, and afterward appear the primitive 
tribes just learning to use tools — such men were the first- 
lings of nature's human fruit. Still further advanced 
we find among the living the barely furnished conscious- 
ness of the least intelligent laborer in his listless toil; 
then on the ascending scale from the beginnings of known 
history there are to be marked the several stages and de- 
grees of civilization, the education of the people, the 
humanities and arts of life; and above these the higher 
attainments of intellect, the achievements of science, the 
consummate creations of genius. Now this whole range 
and mastery of personality, from the least to the loftiest, 
is nowhere to be regarded as completed, can at no point 
be said to have attained its highest possible fulfilment; 
rather it is prophetic throughout of more worlds to be 
conquered and an expectation of life more abundant to 
come. In this line of spiritual ascendancy the Son of man 
stood upon the earth; and he could speak of his coming 
again in glory at the end of this world-age. 

Directly pertinent, likewise, to our inquiry concerning 
the natural history of the supreme Person is the observa- 
tion that signal increase of spiritual power sometimes 



198 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

occurs at some favorable point along a chosen line of 
natural descent. A cumulative heredity knots the threads 
of life together in a strong personality. Like a sudden 
variation in De Vries's primroses, a new genius blossoms 
forth. A specific form does not appear to be an alto- 
gether invariable mould for vital energy to take shape 
in. Personal life seems at times to crack its own mould. 

This bodily frame might be compared to a spring- 
board from which intelligence may take further and at 
times surprising leaps in the spontaneous exercise of its 
growing powers. Indeed, is not our physiological psy- 
chology itself busied just now in taking up and putting 
further back the fences around the margin of the mental 
field, opening consciousness wide to influences that come 
over its threshold from the sub-conscious, throwing up 
the windows, too, for the songs that may float in from afar 
through the super-consciousness? Who can tell, what 
science may cast its measuring line around the ultimate 
capacities, or weigh as in a balance the total possibilities 
of a mind already possessed of the riches of thought, and 
whose aspirations reach beyond the stars ? A new poten- 
tial of personality, we are saying, has at times appeared 
in history and natural tendencies and conjunctions have 
been the cradle in which the chosen person came to his 
hour and his supremacy. The psychical dynamic, history 
only can measure; no science can predict it, no statistics 
account for it. We may not therefore limit by our com- 
mon experience the power of the spirit which we are told 
was given to Jesus without measure. The real question 
for us is, not how he could speak as never man spake, 
but whether he once so spake, and so speaks to us now. 

Consequently, in view of the manifestation of personal 
energy in Christ and in the Christian consciousness, our 
inquiry must at first concern itself with what may be 
held to be historically true concerning the life of Jesus. 
This part of our inquiry, so far as necessary for our im- 



PERSONAL LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST 199 

mediate purpose, must be pursued in the light which 
recent historical and literary criticism may throw over 
the narratives of the Gospels. Biblical criticism may be 
called a science in a certain general sense of the word. 
It has a scientific character so far as it observes certain 
general canons of scientific research; as, for example, 
when it attacks the problem of the origins of Christianity 
with a minimum of preconceived hypotheses, and refuses 
to alter an iota of evidence to fit into any theory what- 
soever. It forfeits its claim to scientific method the 
moment it becomes an exercise of ingenuity in framing 
hypotheses, while being audacious, not to say pugnacious, 
in maintaining them. Historical criticism at best is not 
to be reckoned among the exact sciences, for it cannot 
test its material in any historical laboratory, or by con- 
trol experiments verify its conclusions. Nevertheless, 
Biblical criticism has succeeded in clearing up many his- 
torical probabilities and bringing our knowledge nearer 
the original sources of the life of Christ. While, on the 
one hand, it has left in uncertainty some portions of the 
Gospel narratives, and in others discerned impressions 
of later conceptions and traditions, on the other hand, 
it has found records of Jesus' sayings and acts in the 
Gospels which stand the searching tests of historical 
genuineness. It would be foreign to our purpose to dis- 
cuss any questions of Christian doctrine that recent New 
Testament studies have reopened, but we accept any 
possible aid to be derived from this quarter in the further 
effort to apprehend our immediate problem: viz., the 
psychological significance of the One Person who as no 
other has received the name of the Son of man. 

It is only a passing aberration of scholarship when the 
question is raised: Did Jesus ever live? Some basis in 
historical fact is to be assumed as the ground on which 
a religion has grown up. Purely from a cloud no fruit- 
ful tree ever springs up on the earth. Merely as con- 



200 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

densation from a nebulous myth no personal power — 
certainly no such personal power as from the first in- 
spired and led Christianity — could be formed. Its creative 
spirit proceeds from the Life which was manifested. ^ 

It is with no irreverent curiosity that we ask what 
may be probably known as to the psycho-physiological 
preparation and ground for the advent and Hfe of Jesus. 
For us this is another step in the straight way of follow- 
ing on from step to step the revelation of the spiritual 
significance of personal life; we look for an ultimate in- 
terpretation of personality in the highest and fullest 
reaHzation of it. To us all nature is holy ground, and 
evolution throughout is revelation. 

In two of the Gospels the record is given of the natural 
descent of Jesus and its preparation for the coming of 
the Son of man. It is noteworthy that the heredity of 
Jesus of Nazareth should thus have been recorded as 
an initial part of the gospel of his life. This record puts 
Jesus in a line of natural prophecy, and he is to be inter- 
preted as its fulfilment. In doing this those who kept 
the book of his generation may have wrought for us 
better than they knew. For them it was a Messianic 
promise that held them from age to age faithful to their 
task as they wrote down name after name in that book 
of generation, and of hope deferred; and withal a Hebrew 
pride of descent in a chosen line may have preserved 
through the destructive years these genealogies. But 
for us in this latest-born scientific age this book of the 
generations of Jesus has another and distinctive value; 
for it serves to bring the advent of such a man as Jesus 
was into deeper harmony with natural law. From afar 
nature's selective agencies are to be seen preparing the 
way for the coming of one who should be born to rule 

1 This question, " Did Jesus ever live ? " which has lately been exploited 
by Drews in Germany, has occasioned only a passing ripple; the weight of 
historical criticism is not behind it. 



PERSONAL LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST 201 

as a spiritual king among men. A chosen people, a cho- 
sen family, the elements and energies of the peculiar 
people's unbroken and signal history of struggle, faith, 
and hope were met and blended in his genealogy. Proph- 
ets, priests, and kings, and womanhood blessed above 
others — of such was the heredity of Jesus; such was 
nature's preparation and fulfilment in his birth. The 
Son of man, unto whom as he entered upon his work 
the spirit was given without measure, in the full con- 
sciousness of his God and our God as one looking past 
aU the generations that were before him, and up to the 
divine Fatherhood from which man comes, could say: 
"Before Abraham was, I am" — "I know whence I came, 
and whither I go." Not indeed was his advent in sudden 
outburst of spiritual power that might have consumed 
in excess of glory the very humanness in which it was to 
shine as the light of men; but quietly and naturally as 
one to whom the wisdom of the generations before him 
had brought their gifts, and whom shepherds worshipped, 
was Jesus born, and cradled in the love of her who had 
been chosen and made blessed among women. Naturally 
the child grew and waxed strong, filled with wisdom; 
and the grace of God was upon him. 

We know little of the physical characters of the man 
Jesus, except as these may be inferred from his heredity, 
or became apparent in the manner in which he met with 
unabated strength the exhaustive labors of his daily 
life, as well as from the commanding power that was 
evinced in many instances recorded in the Gospels. Art 
has drawn from its own imagination the face of the 
Christ. But when believers think of his form, his look, 
the tone of his voice, feeling his presence behind the 
written word, like the disciples of old, they may only 
say: His face is full of grace and truth. In a prophetic 
conception of the man of sorrows — a conception born 
of Israel's humiliation — the Messiah is depicted as one 



202 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

who hath no form or comeliness; and when we see him 
there is no beauty in him that we should desire him. 
So the traditional face of Jesus in art is one of infinite 
pity rather than of power. He was acquainted with 
grief and bore our sorrows. Not altogether in such like- 
ness we may well believe did Jesus appear to John, the 
sinewy Baptist when he looked and saw One coming to 
him, whom his eye at once singled out from among the 
multitude, and immediately he bore witness of him, say- 
ing: "This is he of whom I said. After me cometh a man 
who is become before me: for he was before me." Not 
thus, as one without commanding presence, did those 
two followers of the strong Baptist from the desert be- 
hold Jesus, as without a moment of questioning they 
left John, and, when he turned and beheld them, they 
said unto him, Master ! Not so, without beauty and 
form of comeliness that they should desire him, could 
he have appeared to the multitude as they saw him that 
day as he stood on the hillside, just above the blue sea 
of Galilee; and looking up to his face lighted with an 
inward joy they Ustened, as he opened his mouth and 
taught them such blessings as they had never thought 
of before. Not so, we may be sure, did Peter see him 
that cruel night as he sat by the fire warming himself in 
the dimly lighted court; and when he denied him, the 
Lord turned and looked upon Peter, and that moment's 
glance, when Peter felt the eye of his Master resting on 
him, was enough; he went out, and never afterward 
could he deny his Lord again. Not so, as a form de- 
spised and rejected of men did the Roman centurion, com- 
mander of the strong and despiser of the weak, behold 
Jesus on the cross, when with a loud voice he gave himself 
up to God, and, though not a bone had been broken, he laid 
down his life and gave up the ghost; and the centurion, 
standing by, when he saw that victory over death, 
glorified God and said: " Surely this was a righteous man ! " 



PERSONAL LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST 203 

From the heredity and the surroundings of the early 
Kfe of Jesus of Nazareth something may be assumed 
concerning the physical preparation of the Master for 
the life of spiritual power which he was to Hve. It was 
no accident, but a part of the natural perfecting of Jesus 
for his mighty works that he lived until the maturity 
of his strength in one of the choice places of the Holy 
Land. To the traveller, climbing the hillside from the 
plain of Esdraelon, the village of Nazareth offers its clear 
air and fountain of pure water, as well as its cooling shade, 
its trees and flowers, and its hilltop above the dusty 
highway of the nations, with its broad outlook over the 
historic battle-field of Israel from the mountains of Gilboa 
to Mount Carmel, where Elijah had called down fire 
from heaven. And beyond is the glimmer of the sea on 
the western horizon. In this spaciousness, purity, and 
loveliness the child Jesus grew, and at a carpenter's 
bench he became firm of muscle and skilled of hand. 
From this training and wholesomeness of his early life 
he went forth, quick of sight and sound in heart, his 
body and brain fashioned and attempered to his spirit, 
to do a work which well might have exhausted the strength 
of the strongest, in which he endured without moment of 
weakness, in unbroken mastery of himself and of others 
unto the end. The brawny fishermen of Galilee, used to 
nights of struggle with the waves, and trained by years 
of hardy toil to endurance to the utmost, failed at that 
last hour on the Mount of Olives, overcome with slumber 
when they should have watched; but he failed not even 
in his unshared agony; and in calm consciousness of his 
kingly power to do God's will he awaited the midnight 
betrayal and the judgment scene before it was yet dawn. 

The consummate organization of the body for the 
highest spiritual energy of hfe, the perfected physical 
preparation and refinement of the Son of man, which 
the work that he did leads us to assume, is rendered 



204 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

probably likewise by several incidents in the narratives 
of his life. Some descriptions of what he did, and the 
impression that his presence instantly made upon the 
multitude, as well as upon those who walked in most 
intimate companionship with him, are thus more readily 
understood. His disciples indeed tell us nothing of the 
Master's appearance when he was doing his mighty 
works. We would like to know how he looked, what 
light was in his eye, what radiant power in his presence 
when he said those words, which, when once spoken, it 
has never since been possible for them to be forgotten 
among men. But his disciples had come to know him 
after the spirit so transcendently that they have not 
dwelt on their recollections of him after the flesh; their 
personal memories of the Master seem to have been 
taken up and transfigured in their all-illumining faith in 
the risen and ascended Lord. Nevertheless, there are 
some incidental touches in these narratives, some minor 
incidents, that indicate a rare harmony of outward ap- 
pearance and attractive presence in the personality of 
Jesus. It is evident at a glance that the men and women 
whom he met, and little children, too, were at once drawn 
toward him; not his own disciples only, but the multi- 
tudes felt the strong attraction of what we should call 
the wonderful personal magnetism of the man. Did 
ever man speak like this man ? It was not only what he 
said, it was the manner in which he spake with authority, 
and not as the scribes. The people who listened went 
away often not comprehending his words, nor under- 
standing the truth hidden in his parables, but believing 
in him. An impression of his vigor and vitality, beyond 
that of others, is made as we read the brief narrative of 
a single day's work of Jesus, as Mark has described it in 
the first chapter of his Gospel. And after that day of 
exhaustive outgoing from him of vital virtue, we read 
that he rose while it was yet a great while before dawn, 



PERSONAL LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST 205 

after a brief time of midnight sleep, and he went forth 
without the streets of the still slumbering city into a 
desert place to pray, waiting there for Simon and others 
to find him, and then at once in the freshness of his 
marvellous vitality saying to them: "Let us go elsewhere 
into the next towns, that I may preach there also; for 
to this end came I forth." So going about doing good, 
and in many scenes that would have taxed to the utmost 
the powers of the strongest, he lived and did with all 
hjs mind and heart and might the work that God had 
given him to do. Surely this power of God with man 
was compassed in no weakling's frame, betrayed no brain 
overwrought and subject to illusions; this mighty work 
was wrought with no fevered pulse, nor accomplished in 
ascetic's wasted body by fastings often rendered faint, 
and the senses obhvious to the outward world. Nor by 
excess of inward vigils was his eye blinded to the flowers 
of the field, nor his ear rendered insensate to the beggar's 
cry by the wayside. His was no body devitalized by sin, 
no worldling's softness in kings' palaces, nor even prophet's 
frame consumed by flaming passion for righteousness. 
The Son of man had not where to lay his head, but never 
like Elijah did he lie down under a tree in the wilderness, 
his nervous energy spent and his courage gone. From 
that hour when the Baptist pointed him out until the 
very last when he cried with a loud voice upon the cross, 
Jesus was always the commanding Son of man, whom the 
multitude sought to see, from whom the devils fled; the 
Kingly One whom Pilate feared to deliver to his enemies; 
of whom his disciples, afterward calHng him to remem- 
brance, were sure that they had made no mistake, and 
had followed no fables, when they made known his power 
and his presence (II Peter i : 16). 

Two characteristic features of the Gospels in partic- 
ular seem to confirm and may in part be interpreted 
by this view of the natural wholesomeness and physiolog- 



2o6 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

ical perfectness of the man Jesus, irrespective of the de- 
gree in which one may believe that besides his higher 
human power some influx of divine energy was manifested 
in his works. One of these is the account of his ministry 
of heaKng. 

Just because in respect to some human ills the New 
Testament gifts of heahng seem to come so near the 
reach at least of exceptional human powers, and yet so 
far exceed the compass of faith-cures, they have assumed 
of late a practical interest as well as a rehgious aspect. 
They are raising questions of therapeutics as well as of 
faith. The heahng ministry of Jesus lies, as it were, on 
the border-land between the natural and the supernatural, 
and both knowledge and faith waver and are perplexed 
in the effort to comprehend it. Jesus' works of heahng 
may be regarded as wholly miraculous, and as such they 
are manifestations of a divine power in him which it is 
difficult for us to bring into any known relations with 
natural forces. Or they may be regarded as traditional 
accounts of occurrences that were so exceptional that 
the people marvelled at them, and which they could not 
account for by anything known by them of the ordinary 
experiences of men. This view opens out into the con- 
jecture whether a more extensive healing power might 
be gained through a more thorough scientific knowledge 
than we now possess of the deeper and more subtle rela- 
tions of mind and body. At least it is recognized that 
some slight degree of healing virtue may be imparted 
through vitalizing, wholesome personal influence. There 
are physicians whose very presence, we say, does good 
hke a medicine. We are scientifically compelled, however, 
to set within fixed and very narrow limits any personal 
healing power that may be claimed. But it is never safe 
to lay down an absolute Umitation to energies which in 
our experience are known as yet but in part. It would 
carry us too far afield to examine the evidence of the 



PERSONAL LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST 207 

more remarkable cases of faith-cures or mind-healing 
which are popularly reported. Such instances are rarely 
subjected to strict laboratory tests, in which they may 
be verified by control experiments, and the conditional 
causes carefully determined and analyzed. In time 
such experimental verification may possibly separate the 
genuine from the unreal, and extend somewhat further 
our knowledge of the personal restorative powers of 
human nature. To some extent we may admit the as- 
sumption that a person abounding in life may be life- 
giving; that a rich and rarely endowed personality, full 
of natural vitalities and of spiritual sympathies, possessed 
also of gifts of discernment into the psycho-physical con- 
ditions of others, might in some kinds of cases exert a 
revitalizing personal influence — an influence radiating into 
the deeper-seated psychic feehngs of another's being, and 
flowing as a revivifying stream along the channels of 
his exhausted vitalities, causing him to put forth in re- 
newed activity his latent strength. But the reach and 
possible physical effects of this healing touch of spirit 
upon spirit is far at present from any exact scientific 
determination. So far as we have any experience of it, 
it is not to be confused either in theory or practise with 
that pseudo-science, which would regard diseases as 
something to be cured simply by mental denial of their 
reahty. It is vain to identify the physical basis of mind 
with our idea of it, and to suppose that the physical 
passes out of existence simply by putting it out of mind. 
There does not appear to have been an hour of unnatural 
alienation from nature in the recorded life of the Son 
of man. He looked upon the fields while teaching the 
disciples; he withdrew from men for a brief hour, but 
not from outward nature when he would be with his God 
in the holiness of the dawn on the mountain. And of 
the heahng ministry of Jesus, who Kved so much of his 
life out of doors, tradition relates not one soHtary in- 



2o8 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

stance in which he made light of the physical existence 
of disease, or told the many sick folk who were brought 
to him that their suffering was not suffering, that evil 
is not evil, that their leprosy, blindness, impotence and 
divers diseases were only errors of thought. He denied 
not that pain is pain when he cried out in his thirst and 
suffered for us on the cross. The faith that he required 
is not a belief that this body with its infirmities counts 
for nothing, but faith in the divine forgiveness of sin, 
and a will to repent of sin and to trust in God's power to 
restore the lost. It was not mental illusion, but actual 
sin which he called men to repent of; bodily afflictions 
of which they who came to him were very sensibly con- 
scious, were the diseases which he is said to have reUeved. 
Our present concern, however, is not with the miracles 
of heahng as miracles; we are seeking to apprehend 
further the relation between the physical and the psychical 
in the light thrown upon it by the personal power and 
ministry of Christ. The spiritual dynamic of personal 
life in him came to its highest power. Something of this 
psychic dynamic seems to have been evinced, we think, 
in the healing virtue which went forth from him; he 
himself was aware of it. 

The question of the miraculous resolves itself in the last anal- 
ysis into a question of degrees; as an event believed to have 
occurred can be related more or less perfectly to the observer's 
knowledge. At one stage of knowledge an event might seem 
miraculous, which woiild be natural when comprehended in its 
place in a larger experience. An absolute miracle, one that 
could not be harmonized with perfect knowledge, is unthinkable. 
Nothing is miraculous to omniscience. A miracle would be in- 
conceivable for us if it were held to destroy any established law 
or habit of divine procedure in the creation. An absolute mir- 
acle, one contradicting our knowledge within its limits would be 
one thing; a relative miracle, one that may disclose a higher 
power working within the conditions of the existing order, while 



PERSONAL LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST 209 

transcending any previous knowledge of ours, is a different 
thing. Omnipotence may make vaster uses of natural forces, 
within the limitations of their laws, than we can imagine. The 
real question in an alleged miracle is a question first of the fact, 
then of the power by means of which it might be accomplished 
— the latter must be taken into account in judging the credi- 
bility of the fact. Consequently the miracles of heahng in the 
Gospel narratives would not be incredible on the supposition 
of a higher degree of divine power, of which personaHty may be 
capable. Long ago St. Augustine discerned this truth, which 
is not contrary to modem thought, when he wrote: "We say 
that all miracles (portenta) are contrary to nature; but that, 
they are not. For how can that be contrary to nature which 
takes place by the will of God, seeing the will of the great 
Creator is the true nature of everything created ? No, miracle 
is not contrary to nature, but only to what we know of nature." 
— (De Civitate Dei, xxi, 8.) 

Leaving to one side, therefore, as not necessary to our 
course of reasoning, questions concerning miracles, we 
may assume from the narratives in the New Testament 
that Jesus' ministry of healing manifested some superior 
psychic power in the realm of the physical — the healing 
virtue going forth from him acted upon the physical con- 
ditions of others, and that in a manner which seemed 
miraculous to the eye-witnesses. This would be another 
evidence of the power of the psychical in the realm of 
the physical. At the source of the early Christian belief 
in Jesus' mighty works there lies the fact of a new personal 
dynamic in the life of the world. Nor has such quickening 
and restorative power been wholly lost from the personal 
influence of the Christ among men; for it is a present 
spiritual energy in the lives of men. Possibly more than 
we have thought a healing virtue in the hearts of men 
may naturally serve to unify and sustain their physical 
powers, working thus more effectually for health and 
happiness than in our diseased heredity and exhausting 
civilization we may have recognized in our medical phi- 



2IO THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

losophy. The effectual prayer of the righteous man may 
find answer in the healing of the springs of the people's 
Kfe, and the purif3dng of the fountains of childhood in 
Christian homes. Through its cleansing of the physical 
channels of human life the healing virtue of Christianity 
has one of the Master's greater works of faith to fulfil. 
By overcoming sin in the flesh, and allying its power 
with all wholesome knowledge, and sustaining every 
renovating science, it may attain a hitherto unrealized 
efficacy over the disorganizing agencies of disease and 
render human life for the multitudes of men more pure, 
healthful, and free; even as in his anticipatory signs of 
human redemption from evil the Christ bade the Baptist 
behold the evidence that he had not failed in the work 
he came from God to do. 

The other of the two considerations referred to above 
concerning the psycho-physiological preparation of the 
personality of Jesus is the narrative of the virgin birth. 
The New Testament literature affords very uncertain in- 
dications of the manner in which the belief in the virgin 
birth of Jesus became prevalent among the earlier Chris- 
tians. Mark is silent concerning it, possibly not finding 
mention of it in the sources from which he derived his 
Gospel. Luke in the prefatory chapters of his Gospel 
draws from other sources the narrative of the nativity, 
and in two verses (of somewhat doubtful position in the 
text and of indecisive interpretation) he seems to at- 
tribute a supernatural character to the birth of Jesus 
(Luke I : 34-35). Paul, some of whose epistles are more 
nearly contemporaneous with the lifetime of Jesus than 
other extant documents, makes no explicit reference to 
a belief in the virgin birth, and does not rest upon it his 
faith in the divine Sonship of the Christ. The Gospel 
of St. John makes no use of this belief in declaring that 
the Word was made flesh. The belief may have been a 
reflection of the faith created by the life of Jesus thrown 



PERSONAL LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST 211 

back upon his nativity. At least it witnesses to the early 
beginnings of the endeavor of Christian thought, that 
has continued in every age since to this day, to j&nd answer 
according to its light, and corresponding with its knowl- 
edge, to the question which Jesus himself has put to all 
the ages since his advent: "What think ye of the Christ?" 
The naive naturalness of the narratives of Luke — a sim- 
plicity and beauty which we would not have left out of 
our Bible — vindicates how easily conditions of thought 
prevalent in the apostolic age lent themselves to this 
explanation of the wonder of Christ's hfe — a life so 
divine must have proceeded immediately from the 
Holy Ghost. And symboUcally interpreted as aU creeds 
to be truly apprehended by us in their essential values 
must be, the words "Born of the Virgin Mary" are still 
to be repeated as confessing in unison with the apostolic 
church faith in the incarnate Son of God, although our 
thought of the Incarnation may resemble Paul's or John's 
rather than that of the words of the Apostles' Creed in 
their hteral sense.^ 

The important fact for our interpretation of the mean- 
ing of personal life is that such a birth could be attributed 

^ One may believe in the reality of the Incarnation without either accept- 
ing or denying the accoimt of the miraculous birth of Jesus. For a recent 
restatement of the doctrine of the Incarnation, see the volume in the In- 
ternational Theological Library on the Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ 
(pp. 427 seq.), by Professor H. R. Mackintosh; also in the Appendix his care- 
ful presentation of the subject of Jesus' Birth of a Woman. He says: "He 
was the Son of God. But we dare not call virgin birth a sine qua non of Son- 
ship" (p. 531). In what is written above, my specific line of reasoning does 
not permit further statement of my own thought concerning the imion of 
God and man in Christ. I may note a tendency in modem theology to 
apply to this supreme problem of Christian thought the idea of develop- 
ment, which elsewhere is proving so fruitful in theological thinking; the 
Incarnation may thus be regarded as a process of divine impartation, real 
at the nativity, and coincident with each stage in the human growth, and 
receptive consciousness of Jesus — an Incarnation beginning at birth, med- 
iated through the life, and finished in the resurrection and ascension of 
Jesus. No philosophy, however, of the imique person of Jesus is essential 
to believing in Jesus himself. 



212 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

to him because he had lived so divine a hfe as had been 
witnessed by many — most divine to those who had been 
nearest him and knew him best. Among eye-witnesses 
of his presence he had lived so divinely that it was natural 
to believe he must have been more than human in the 
mode of his birth. Indirectly but strikingly this belief has 
value for our apprehension of the supernal meaning of his 
person. 

So far indeed as concerns the physiological prepara- 
tion for the psychical power of the Son of man, the nar- 
rative of his supernatural conception might have a doubt- 
ful value. For if he was human like ourselves, and our 
nature is to find its full measure in his humanity, then 
his heredity must have been as human as is ours. Theol- 
ogy has clung to the doctrine of the miraculous birth of 
Jesus, and the Roman Catholic dogma of the Immaculate 
Conception of the Virgin has gone still further, in order 
to escape the suspicion of any imputation of original sin 
or enduring taint of human nature in the sinless Son of 
God. But in so doing Christian theology has fallen upon 
the opposite difficulty of maintaining that in all points he 
was tempted as we are. Whatever may be thought of 
this theological teaching and its dilemma (which we men- 
tion only that we may pass it by), approaching as we 
are now seeking to do the person of Jesus from the natural 
history of personality, we come before him as the One in 
whom, beginning, from his childhood, man's self-conscious 
life rose to the supreme manifestation, and when so viewed, 
we must assume that there was no breach of continuity 
in his inheritance of our nature. Whether before ever 
his members were fashioned, as afterward at his baptism, 
there may have been an exceptional descent of the Spirit, 
an impartation of the Holy Ghost beyond our power to 
comprehend, but not beyond the capacity of nature to 
receive — this may well be matter for speculative thought 
or for simple faith. But in any case, in whatever manner 



PERSONAL LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST 213 

he became divinely human in his birth and through the 
development of his life, he would not have become the 
man for us he is, unless from his mother's womb he had 
entered into full inheritance of the powers and virtues, 
and also the liabiHties to temptation of our common human 
nature; unless among these in him had been met and 
blended the masculine and the feminine elements of life's 
rejuvenation and enrichment. Both parents, the father 
and the mother, give to us of their natures, and the best 
qualities in each are harmonized in the character of the 
child that may grow to be fairer and abler than either 
of those who gave it birth. And surely the life of Jesus 
showed the union and perfection of both the manly and 
the womanly of his heredity from a line of kings and 
from the mother who was blessed among women; for in 
his personal authority and in his wondrous personal at- 
tractiveness, he led strong men to leave all and follow 
him, and drew the little child from the midst of them to 
come to him. 

We pass now from these observations, such as the his- 
torical data suggest, concerning the natural preparation 
of the mind that was in Jesus; we have next to apprehend 
the meaning of the personal Hfe as it is lifted up in the 
Christ, and as it is known in the Christian consciousness. 
We are reverently to interpret the self-consciousness of 
Jesus through ours, and again to reinterpret our self- 
consciousness through him. 

Jesus was a historical person, and Jesus has become 
the Christ of history. With the insight of simple trust 
the unlearned behold his Hkeness in the crystal clearness 
of the Gospels; the scholars search diligently the his- 
torical materials of the New Testament times to find, as 
pearls of great price, some genuine sayings of the Lord. 
He left no record of his teaching; he committed no words 
to parchment to be read for generations to come. He 



214 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

built no city; no foundations of temple of massive stone 
bearing his inscription are discovered beneath the dust 
of ages. He achieved no signal victory; raised no trium- 
phal arch to make his name imperishable; a perishable 
cross of wood, on a hill which tradition cannot distin- 
guish from another, was his only sign. Once only did he 
write; in a company of scribes and pharisees he stooped 
down, and with his finger wrote on the ground — what was 
it that he wrote ? It is related only that to a frail woman, 
sinned against and sinning, left alone in his presence, he 
said: "Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more." 
His mighty works were wrought in no permanent memo- 
rials of his power; simply the water turned into wine 
was a sign to manifest his glory; only frail bodies, healed 
of their infirmities, but soon returning to the dust, were 
the evidences of his indwelling virtue. The one sole 
tangible, visible thing that he left in remembrance of 
himself was the broken bread and the cup of communion 
which he gave to his disciples. Nevertheless of the person 
of Jesus this wonderful thing remains forever true ; though 
without writing or memorial of his own to make himself 
known, he is of all men the best known — his name named 
to every child, his teaching the faith of men of every 
generation, his example the law of countless lives, his 
character the ideal of the world, his personal influence, 
as the centuries come and go, the abiding power of God 
with men. Others who have taught are known to the 
few by their ideas; the mind that was in Jesus is known 
to the many by his spirit in the thoughts of men's hearts. 
We must go back into the receding past to gain acquain- 
tance with others who once lived lives worthy of remem- 
brance; we know the Christ as one always with us in 
our lives; we believe in him not only because his disciples 
beheld his glory, but because his light is shining in our 
skies. He who was born in Bethlehem goes before us 
as the man who is to come in the glory of the future. 



PERSONAL LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST 215 

We do not and cannot separate the Jesus of history from 
the Christ of to-day. It is not true to the life that was 
manifested in him when we put the question — Jesus or 
Christ? The historical Jesus has become the potential 
Christ of history. Jesus is himself the creator of the 
ideal Christ. Had he not come then in Judea, the Light 
of the world would not now be shining in men's hearts. 
The same Jesus who was yesterday, is become the Christ 
of to-day; he lives in the life of his own. He gathers 
into one the ideals of men and the hopes of the ages, and 
by his name these all are known. We mistake no il- 
lusive feeling for spiritual reality; we stand on firm law 
of life and history, as substantial and as unbroken as 
the law of conservation in nature, when we hold it to be 
true that Jesus Christ in his life on earth must have 
been potentially all that he has become kinetically, and is 
actually and shall continue to be in the life of the world. 
The modern critical school is not generally disposed 
to deny or to minimize the continuous energy of Jesus' 
personal power. Historical critics who have not hesitated 
to reduce to the lowest terms the authenticity of the 
documents that bear witness of him, have nevertheless 
discovered in his spirit an abiding presence; few would 
be disposed to dispute this truth concerning him which 
Wellhausen with profound insight has perceived; Jesus 
cannot be understood apart from the effects of his coming, 
and if he is separated from this, justice will not be done 
to him.^ 

^ Wellhausen's words are worthy of more full quotation: "The heavenly 
Messiah now, it is true, overshadowed the earthly Jesus, but his working 
did not therefore cease. He was not only the King in heaven, but also the 
first in a succession of spirits on earth. . . . Without this afterworking in 
the Church, we can indeed form no conception of the rehgious personaUty 
of Jesus. It appears, however, always in the reflection, broken through 
the mediimi of the Christian faith. . . . One cannot understand him 
without his historical working, and if one separates him from that one can 
scarcely do justice to his importance. Without his death he would not 
have become historic." — {Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien, pp. 114-5.) 



2i6 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

It is not indispensable to recover in clear and definite 
delineation the historical figure of Jesus over against his 
own times in order that we may apprehend the meaning 
of personal life in his revelation and glorification of it. 
It is enough to know the mind of Jesus as it was mani- 
fested to his disciples, and as it has been ever energizing 
in the mind of his Church. He is known in Christian 
experience. How Jesus once lived on earth lies in part 
disclosed amid the shadows of the receding past; how 
he lives now and always is known in the inspiration of 
human life by his spirit. We accept gladly any help 
from historical studies by means of which we may con- 
ceive better the conditions under which he did the work 
given him to do, and the materials, and limitations also, 
which the thoughts and ways of men then offered him 
for his parables and teachings. But the interpretation 
of personal life in its Christian realization is to be found 
not only as we look back with the historical scholars to 
the sources which they recognize of our knowledge of 
his life, but also as we may behold him in the simple 
realism of the Gospels and the faith in him of which they 
bear witness. For in either case we feel, and the heart 
of the world's life cannot lose, the sense of his presence 
and mastery. Critically stripped of the legendary, con- 
templated in the cold light of the most searching his- 
torical criticism, or discovered, as nothing else finds us, 
in the immediate response of our life to his, the personal 
influence of Jesus has become the dynamic of the ideal 
in the world, the power of God with man. We may go 
further and say that recent historical research, whatever 
it may take from the claims of the New Testament writ- 
ings, serves to clarify and enhance our apprehension of 
the significance for us of the person of Christ for our 
personality because of the very fact that it is not con- 
cerned with dogmatic presuppositions concerning the 
two natures of the Christ of the creeds, while it attempts 



PERSONAL LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST 217 

to rediscover what in him was most human and real. 
These studies leave us with an enhanced conception of 
his unique and superlative person as himself the source 
of Christianity, and also of his re-creative power over 
the materials given him in his age with which to do the 
Father's work. 

This view, which must be taken of Jesus in order to 
account for the origin of Christianity, is enough to raise 
far above any possible materiaHstic estimate the worth 
of all human personality. Biblical and historical criti- 
cism, in the hands of its most thorough masters, leaves 
us in the end neither in a revived rationahsm nor in a 
despiritualized naturalism — neither, that is to say, a dis- 
solution of the rich reality of the inner Kfe into an anaemic 
system of ideas, nor a crass reduction of the thoughts of 
men's hearts to states of their cerebral areas. The Christ 
of historical criticism is the original source of the disciples' 
faith, the ever-present vitaHty of his church, and the 
revelation of the spiritual worth of humanity which he 
came to save and to glorify. After these more general 
statements we proceed accordingly to estimate in several 
chief particulars the value of personal hfe in the Chris- 
tian realization of it. RecaUing the distinctive elements 
and factors of self-conscious life which we have examined 
in the preceding pages, we inquire further — how do these 
appear in the Hght of the ideal personality as that is 
hfted up in Christ? 

First, the mind of Jesus reveals the transcendent 
ideational energy of personal being. We have seen that 
in the simplest beginnings of intelligence the ideas which 
the child puts together in its mind cannot be identified 
as having the same physical character as the blocks 
which its hands build up; the play of the child's intel- 
Hgence with every new experience transcends the motions 
of the muscles of the body. Thought from its first 
awakening flutters above outward objects, erelong be- 



2i8 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

comes capable of sustained reasoning, and in joyous 
flight of imagination may possess the freedom of the 
skies. So the child Jesus grew in knowledge and wis- 
dom. Jesus was taught in Mary's home on the hillside 
of Nazareth as other children are in those early years of 
infancy, in which so wondrously a human mind born 
of the spirit in nature comes to itself. Jesus in child- 
hood learned those simple household words which after- 
ward he should fill to the brim with his consciousness 
of God, his Father and ours, and of men as the children 
of God. Nature gave to him her language, and from the 
things that he had seen from his boyhood at Nazareth 
and by the blue lake of Gahlee he could draw his parables 
of the spirit. In short, the psychology, if one may so 
speak of the great Teacher, was like that of others, phys- 
iological in its groundwork, dependent upon the physical 
organization for its development, and upon the symboHsm 
of the language of the senses for its expression. Yet the 
very hesitancy in which our reHgious sense may shrink 
from stating thus in plain words the physiological con- 
ditions of Jesus' consciousness of indwelling divinity, 
bears witness to the mind that was in Jesus as not of this 
world and as transcending its earthly conditions. To 
nature, in its outward forms, in the midst of which he 
had been nurtured, the spirit of Jesus went forth as with 
a higher authority, transforming the world of outward ap- 
pearances into symbols of a reality fairer and diviner than 
they seemed, and discerning in its transient forms the 
thoughts of the Eternal. One need but open the Gospels 
at almost any page to perceive the mind of the Christ 
revealing in a new Hght every famihar thing of which 
he takes thought. He sees all things over against a 
divine background. Though his teaching has become 
blended with traditions, though it has been foreshortened, 
confused, darkened at times in its transmission through 
the minds of his disciples, nevertheless, the mind of 



PERSONAL LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST 219 

Jesus reveals the dear consciousness of spiritual Sonship 
and a sure sense of divine reality. The thoughts of 
Jesus shine down upon ours, positive as the stars. His 
"Verily, verily, I say unto you" speaks to us with the 
immediate certainty of a mind thinking its thought with 
God. His answers meet, as from above, questions that 
arise from the deeps of human life. His words speak 
with an authority all their own, and not as our philoso- 
phies. As an apostle, who had been trained in the school 
of the scribes and afterward had come to know the 
Christ after the spirit, once put it: the Son of God, Jesus 
Christ, was not yea and nay, but in him is yea (II Cor, 
I : 19). He is to this day the yea of the spirit in human 
thought and history. 

The spiritual significance of mind as manifested in 
Jesus' self-consciousness is brought out more directly by 
a study of his teachings as these are critically considered 
in all possible hghts. Our present concern with them is 
not theological, but epistemological; not, that is, with 
Jesus' doctrine of God and man, nor with his ethical 
teachings as such, but with the interpretative light which 
his self-consciousness may throw into our knowledge of 
ourselves. We must hmit ourselves, therefore, by referring 
to the hterature in which these teachings are treated in 
detail, and selecting a few only of the principal lines of 
New Testament studies that bear directly on our dis- 
cussion. 

I. Thus, for one example, the ideational power of 
mind and its transcendence appears in the Christian con- 
sciousness of God, of which Jesus' knowledge in himself 
of the Father is at once the source and the inspiration. 

It is sometimes said, as though that were the end of the 
whole matter, that men have made their own gods. That 
in a sense is true, and if man could not find a god, he 
would make one. For he cannot rid himself of all sense 
of some power greater than himself on which he is ab- 



220 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

solutely dependent. But this is by no means all; the 
mental power to create a god itself witnesses to a godlike 
power of creating. It is a human power, surpassing the 
animal capacity of limited immediate response to the 
perceived environment. It is escape of mind from the 
visible to the invisible, from the actual to the ideal. It 
is personal response to Him whom having not seen we 
love. Suppose an animal to have become able to feel 
as much as this, "This which is felt is feeling of mine"; 
at that moment it would stand in such awareness of itself 
at the very threshold of the consciousness of a human 
child. There indeed all animal life seems to stop short. 
But suppose it further to be able to say to itself in such 
dim awareness of being: "I am, and I am not what I 
see." Then a life capable of conscious individuality 
would have begun. Suppose further to this were added 
the power to think, "I am not the world, and the world 
is not myself, and there is something in which both I 
and my world exist"; by such afl&rmation it is become a 
rational being, breathing thoughtful breath, capable, if 
such life continues growing, of creating a new world of 
ideas. Suppose it to reach one degree higher of thought- 
ful existence, and as expression of its full consciousness 
of being to say, "I am," and in the same breath to say, 
''My God." Therewith the height of human being is 
won, the widest expansion of self-consciousness opened, 
the horizon of the finite selfhood blends indistinguishably 
with the infinite beyond. Man has gained such power; 
in the similitude of his own personal being he can con- 
ceive of the God who has made him in his likeness. Thus 
anthropomorphism is itself evidence of some godlike 
transcendence of the psychical in the natural. 

Some anthropomorphism must cling to all finite thought 
of the infinite One; for the simiHtude of our personality 
limits the concept of divinity. But the immanence of 
the divine in man's self-consciousness, which is brought 



PERSONAL LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST 221 

out in the idea of God, is a reality greater than our thought, 
in which, in the very act of thinking, we have our being. 
The supreme authentication of the immanence of the 
divine in the human was given in the self-consciousness 
of Jesus, and is assured in the Christian consciousness of 
God, in which his disciples have fellowship with him. 
For Jesus was not merely as one thinking God's thoughts 
after him, as Kepler, the astronomer, could say of him- 
self, when after laborious effort he had demonstrated the 
laws of planetary motion. Jesus was as one thinking 
God's thoughts with God. He could say of himself: "I 
and my Father are one." Having come to a knowledge 
in himself of the Father, and its full assurance, Jesus 
gave his consciousness of God to his disciples, and it has 
become the faith of his church; it is humanity's most 
personal and supreme achievement. It was his life with 
the Father which that disciple who knew him best de- 
clared to be the Life that was manifested, and its fellow- 
ship with the Father the disciples have with his Son 
Jesus Christ. 

2. Again the spiritual significance of personality shines 
forth from the Christian consciousness of the kingdom of 
God. In the mind of Jesus the spiritual realm was the 
permanent reality — more real in his inner perception of 
it than the mountains round about Jerusalem. The 
heavenly was not to him a hope but a presence, and on 
the horizons of this world-age he saw the signs of the 
world-age to come. 

Consider what is contained in large outlines in the 
Christian thought of the kingdom of God. There is a 
natural kingdom of man, which has its foundations deeply 
laid in the world of life before he came. We must go far 
back in our natural history to find the elements of the 
social instincts. The unicellular protozoa became ag- 
gregated in colonies of cells. Life from the start has been 
an untiring process of integration. In the struggle for 



222 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

existence natural forces must form organic combinations. 
And might among men is early brought under a vital 
compulsion to make rights. As personal individuality is 
realized, force becomes socialized and moralized, obliga- 
tions corresponding to natural functions are distinguished, 
personal rights slowly acquired. Society gains form and 
substance in customs, institutions, laws; a higher prin- 
ciple — a law of personal values — becomes the ruling idea 
in social evolution. Hence, there appears at the dawn 
of history the kingdom of man in fulfilment of the king- 
dom of nature. 

Into this kingdom of man Jesus was born — a kingdom 
then of unrealized promise, disorganized by its struggling 
forces, demoralized by the power of lawlessness and the 
lawlessness of power. The kingdom of man had become 
in Jesus' time the decadent virtue of Rome, and the dis- 
appointment of the hope of Israel. Religion itself had 
failed to hallow power. Yet in human nature the founda- 
tions of the kingdom of God remained. Personal society 
at its worst rests on something of more worth than animal 
association. The hive of bees, the nest from which the 
industrious ants go forth to their labor and return in the 
way they went — marvel of co-operation though these 
seem — are social attainments far below the level of the 
life of the early cave-dwellers who might recognize one 
another as individual families; and the tribe is another 
order of social organization than the herd. Human 
society had its groundwork laid deep in nature, but it 
did not remain underground. It was uplifted into an- 
other element of personal fellowship; it is individual 
freedom realizing itself in social welfare — liberty organized 
for the common weal. A society of persons is essentially 
a moral organization. Its prophecy can be fulfilled, its 
principle realized only as the kingdom of man shall be- 
come the kingdom of God. It was far from that when 
Jesus came preaching its gospel. But he saw it, the 



PERSONAL LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST 223 

kingdom of man transfigured in his vision of the humanity 
which is as the kingdom of heaven. No more disfigured 
by human lusts, no longer possessed by demoniac pas- 
sions, rent and impotent to save itself; no longer killing 
its prophets and enthroning its oppressors; not the so- 
ciety into which he had been born; not the dominion of 
the powers of this world, whom from his boyhood he had 
seen from the hilltop above Nazareth going and coming 
with lordly retinue and pomp along the highway of the 
, nations across the plain beneath — this was not the king- 
dom which he saw was to come on earth. Not the cities 
by the Sea of Galilee, where Herod's palace and the villas 
of the greatest among them looked down upon the waters 
and the fishers' boats toiling amid the waves; while on 
the other shore were the villages of low-thatched homes 
and hard-taxed poverty, and in all the region round 
about were multitudes of the sick, the impotent, and the 
possessed to be healed, and no one to speak to them a 
word of blessing — ^if indeed they were not deemed past 
cleansing and Israel's God had not forgotten them! Not 
Jerusalem with its tombs of its prophets and the tables of 
the money-changers in the temple ; not this world of ours 
still too like that which he saw and pitied while he hved 
on earth; was Jesus' inner vision of the kingdom of God. 
But dimly even yet may clearest, happiest Christian 
faith visualize that which Jesus beheld when the seventy 
returned with their first reports of what in his name they 
had done, and Jesus lifted up his eyes and saw Satan 
fallen as lightning from heaven. All too feebly and 
vaguely may his church conceive what was in the mind 
of Jesus when he taught his disciples to pray: " Thy king- 
dom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." 
But ever since he taught his disciples that prayer, his 
vision has been to Christian faith as a new creation of 
the earth, and the imperishable hope of a renewed human- 
ity. Jesus' vision of the Son of man coming in his king- 



224 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

dom, as on the clouds of heaven, with power and great 
glory, has been from that hour to this, and shall be until 
he comes, the faith of Christianity in the ultimate hallow- 
ing of all power, the inestimable value of man, and the 
endless possibilities of personal lives, made perfect to- 
gether in the presence and reign of God over all and in 
all blessed forever. 

Moreover, this possibility, this value, this perfection 
of humanity, which to us seems so remote from common 
life and unreal as a far millennial glory, was to Jesus 
no distant unreality. From the glimpses which the 
Gospels afford of his inner Kfe it is evident that he lived 
even in the midst of the sins and sufferings of the people 
in the felt presence and power of the kingdom of God; 
as it was said of him, when he was on earth he was the 
Son of man who is in heaven.^ The laws of the kingdom 
were actual to Jesus as were the ways that led up to 
Jerusalem. The love of God for the world was real as 
the cross on which he was to be crucified. Its triumph he 
saw as already won, when, as he was about to die, he 
spake to the disciples of the sign of his coming and the 
end of the world. Such power to realize the future as the 
present, to behold with inner clearness and certainty 
what God alone knows from eternity as present reality 
— such vision of the kingdom of heaven is the greatest 
achievement of the spirit which is in man. Flesh and 
blood cannot bring this forth. When Jesus taught his 
disciples, and all the generations since, to pray, " Our 
Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy 
kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in 
heaven" — that prayer was itself a great act, a spiritual 
deed, one of Jesus' mighty works. The Lord's Prayer is 
a spiritual power in the world. Among the forces that 
exalt life and are making the history of civilization, its 

* John 3 : 13. This may be a later gloss, but it reflects the impression of 
Jesus which primitive faith had received. 



PERSONAL LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST 225 

energy is incalculable. The Lord's Prayer on the lips of 
men is itself evidence of the spiritual nature of the per- 
sonal life. It is fellowship in thought and purpose with 
God. 

In recent literature of the New Testament there has been a 
prevalent tendency to emphasize the eschatological teaching of 
Jesus, to regard his words concerning the last things as the key 
to his Messianic mission. It is held that the Lord was con- 
scious of himself as the Messiah, but the time for his Messianic 
•work was not come. This, it is said, was the secret of his suffer- 
ings. He knew that the kingdom of God could come on earth 
only after his death; he must depart in order that he might 
come again in the power and glory of the Son of man. The 
kingdom of God, as he preached it, lay principally in the future, 
and whoUy in the domain of the miraculous. This view has 
been carried to the extreme of regarding the future and super- 
natural coming of the kingdom as the secret and burden of 
Jesus' whole ministry. He lived to prepare the kingdom, to 
annoimce its coming; he should himself be the Messiah when 
he should come again to inaugurate the kingdom. A more 
sober presentation of this view is contained in these words of 
Canon Sanday: "I doubt if we have realized — I am sure that 
I myself until lately had not adequately realized — how far the 
centre of gravity (so to speak) of our Lord's ministry and mis- 
sion, even as they might have been seen and followed by a con- 
temporary, lay beyond the grave, I doubt if we have realized 
to what an extent he conceived of the kingdom of heaven, that 
central term in his teaching, as essentially future and essentially 
supernatural." {The Life of Christ in Recent Research, p. 121.) 
Two factors are recognized as entering into Jesus' conception of 
his mission. One was the prevalent apocal)^tic expectation con- 
cerning the preaching of the Messiah; the other was the spiritual 
power of Jesus himself, "by virtue of which through an inward 
necessity of his being he knew himself to be the Messiah, the 
Son of the Father." In the preaching of Jesus these two are 
blended; to him the kingdom was both present in his own 
Messianic power, and yet future, for this world-age must pass 
away before it can come. "Only a paradoxical formula can 



226 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

cover the actual historical facts. And that must run thus: The 
future salvation has become present, and yet has not ceased to be 
future." (Kaftan, Jesus and Paulus, p. 23. Cited by Sanday, 
op. cit., p. 116.) 

The last twenty years of biblical research confirm the 
belief that there are contained in the Gospels at least 
two original sources in which contemporary accounts of 
the words and acts of Jesus have survived; and as we 
look, and look again, amid the shifting clouds of a far- 
off history we behold a form distinctly outlined in its 
solitary and commanding features, luminous in its own 
spirituality, against the background of his age; we see — 
Jesus himself ! 

Secondly, another element of personality is supremely 
manifested in the will of Christ. Whatever else may be 
left in obscurity, historical criticism casts no shadow of 
doubt over the unconquerable energy of Jesus' will to do 
God's will, and the Christian will of life has become a domi- 
nant force in humanity. From Luke's narrative it appears 
that this higher will of life was early felt by Jesus as a 
superior inward compulsion to which he must render 
obedience. When the child Jesus was twelve years old 
he said to his parents: "Wist ye not that I must be about 
my Father's business?" When he was about thirty 
years of age this higher will was realized in his instan- 
taneous and complete self-control, when in the wilder- 
ness the whole power of the temptation of the world was 
concentrated against him. The higher will had grown 
and become firm in a single purpose; his commanding 
character, now sure of itself and immovable, resisted 
successive temptations, as a cliff of rock tosses back the 
waves that break in their utmost reach at its foot. Hence- 
forth, from his baptism to his cross, the will of God is his 
will. Jesus' determination to do God's will, as one tre- 
mendous passion, fusing all elements of his being in a 



PERSONAL LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST 227 

single and flawless purpose, is his obedience unto death 
and the victory of his life over death. It was this felt 
presence and power of the will of God in him that led 
disciples, when he called, to leave all and follow him; 
that sent his enemies away silenced and hating him the 
more. The energy of the will of God in him forced evil 
spirits to come out of men who had lost all power to keep 
their own bodies in subjection, and it held his disciples 
true to him to the end. From the deeps of Jesus' con- 
sciousness came forth that supernal assertion of his Hfe, 
ierene as it was mighty: "I have power to lay it down, 
and I have power to take it again." For him death was 
no surrender of the will to Hve; it was obedience to the 
higher will that he should overcome death and live again. 

Thirdly, an aspect of personahty which is superlatively 
revealed in Jesus is the element of feehng. In him the 
affective character of human nature appears in its purity 
and at its best. 

In a preceding chapter we have noticed the physical 
relations and the psychological functions of feeling in 
our thinking and willing. It was held that feehng is not 
to be dissociated from the unity of these elements of the 
personal Hfe, and that it enters consequently into our 
capacity of coming into direct contact with outward 
reaUty. In other words, the affective side of human na- 
ture, throughout its entire range is to be taken into ac- 
count in any theory of knowledge. From our point of 
view of personal hfe as energy, feehng is part and moment 
of the whole process, the total movement of personal 
hfe. As such it is not to be neglected as a factor in our 
cognitive power — it is in its way a means of knowing. 
Only from a static conception, not from a dynamic view 
of self-consciousness, can feehng be regarded as a purely 
subjective state, without value as a means of touching 
the truth of things. 

Here an evident distinction is to be admitted between 



228 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

the feelings that are purely physical in their origin and 
objects and the personal feeling, which may pervade as 
an atmosphere the whole field of consciousness, or the 
inner sense that may come and go, and yet abide after 
all reasonings as a consciousness of real value or meaning 
of our Hfe. The former more distinctly bodily feelings 
may be the upper limit of animal sense-perception, as 
they mark the threshold of human self-consciousness; 
the latter may be the beginnings of spiritual insight and 
conditions of higher intuitions, by means of which we 
may become aware, though vaguely and dimly at first, 
of the outlying realm of the supersensible and the eternal. 
Here, likewise, our moral sense of values and the religious 
feeling of absolute dependence may be indications of 
our personal relations to realities, intimations of our 
living in touch with things that are not seen and temporal. 
They may be, then, more than purely subjective states, 
an afterglow of our own ideas, or reflections of our own 
consciousness back upon itself; in their source and 
in their constancy they are the subject acted upon ob- 
jectively to itself, and reacting upon its awareness of 
itself as so affected. They gain moral evidence and force 
as they meet the pragmatic test of truth; as they lead 
to better adaptations of the self to the felt environment 
of an objectively apprehended realm of values and ends. 
In a word, the realism of the moral and religious feehng 
is a fact of experience, having validity as an essential 
element in the consciousness of the self as living and act- 
ing in the presence of reality. Otherwise the conscious 
sense of the environment in which we live and have our 
being throughout the entire extent of it, all round, would 
be an illusion, the whole relation of subject to object be 
lost, and nothing have meaning for us. 

Modern psychology of the unconscious has thrown 
the whole circumference of consciousness open to in- 
fluences from beyond consciousness. In some experi- 



PERSONAL LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST 229 

ments, for instance, it was found that "shadow lines 
thrown at certain angles, but too faint to be consciously 
discriminated, influenced the judgment of lengths of 
other lines. ... In this case the feeling-background, 
perhaps in part above and perhaps in part below the 
threshold, seems more delicately adjusted to environment 
than the cognitive rational factor."^ If thus feehng-in- 
fluences may enter cognitively from beneath the limit of 
mental recognition, and blend with the rational judgments 
of the sensational world, it is likewise comprehensible 
that influences from the super-conscious, from the realm 
of spiritual energies, may be received and become ele- 
ments of the moral judgments and the religious values 
of the personal life. We dwell not in human isolation 
from reality around and above us, encompassing us on 
every side; more finely than we know we niay by nature 
be attuned to influences of the universe far and near, 
and made capable of vibrating in responsive feehng and 
ideas to influences which from all sides, the seen and the 
unseen, may quicken our self-consciousness. Hence come 
impressions, surprises of thought, ideas that seem to 
spring up of themselves within us, thoughts never thought 
of before, as well as those more exceptional inner experi- 
ences, rare inspirations, sudden upliftings of spirit, mo- 
ments of illumination, or the mystic's vision of God. 
And these, too, might not seem incredible, nothing un- 
natural, if we knew metaphysically what a world of 
energies, what an omnipresence of the spiritual is our 
personal environment; even as now we know in part the 
world of physical forces always acting upon us. 

Schleiermacher in his Reden ueber Religion found the lowly 
origin of religion in the feeling of absolute dependence. Since 
then the function of the religious feeling in relation to the 

^ Pratt, J. B., Psychology of Religious Belief, p. 20, and references to 
Jastrow and Strutton. 



230 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

knowledge of reality has been much discussed. That it has 
some function should be acknowledged. The older writers have 
considered it mainly from the philosophical side; now the values 
of religious feeling are to be reconsidered in relation to the psy- 
chology rather than any preformed philosophy of religion. The 
role of feeling in general in its relation to cognition is to be 
studied as a psychological experience before the vaUdity of the 
religious feeling as a source of knowledge of God can be deter- 
mined. The inseparableness of feeHng and idea may be affirmed 
against a purely logical rationalism. ''Intuition without feel- 
ing, and feeHng without intuition are both nothing." Schleier- 
macher came close to the centre of the question when he said: 
"That first mysterious moment, which occurs in every sensible 
perception, before intuition and feeling separate, and where 
sense and its object have become one, is indescribable." (Reden, 
pp. 64, 73.) Compare Baron von Hiigel (Eternal Life, p. 105), 
whose exposition of mysticism and its rational evaluation is 
both profound and illuminative. An attempt to bring out the 
validity of the moral and religious feeling as an element in know- 
ing was made in an early book of mine on The Religious Feeling, 
especially as a corrective of the unconscious rationalism of the 
then prevalent New England theology. A recent acute and 
thorough discussion of the relation of feeling and idea and a 
vindication of the underlying truth in mysticism is to be found 
in Hocking's volume, The Meaning of God in Human Experience. 

Feeling is not only at the perennial source of personal 
Ufe, it pervades also the whole stream of life. It is al- 
ways an element of thinking, however one's processes 
of thought may be filtrated from all emotional elements 
and rendered pure thinking. The most limpid thought 
is still aerated, as it were, by feeling. An atmosphere of 
feeHng encompasses and pervades all rational activities. 
The personal tone affects our judgments; even in scien- 
tific observations the personal error must be reduced to 
its lowest, but never quite vanishing, term. Nor is this 
all. FeeHng is the forerunner of ideas; feeling hardly 
rises before it breaks into thought. An aim and end of 



PERSONAL LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST 231 

feeling is attained in clear ideas, assured of themselves. 
Even the lowest feelings, most allied to the physical in 
their original impulses, minister to the higher mental 
growth; they might be regarded as the antennae of the 
mental organism by means of which the mind seeks until 
it finds the nourishment fitted for its sustenance and 
growth. Only in analytic introspection are the primal 
elements of our self-consciousness to be held apart; they 
coalesce and co-operate in our daily living. The stream 
of personal life is one stream, all its elements and energies 
are commingled in the wave of consciousness breaking 
at any moment on its environing shore. Moreover, the 
fact should not be overlooked that the action and re- 
action of the life of feehng and thought are mutual, and 
that ideas are ended, as they may have begun, in feeling. 
The idea is formative of feehng, as the feeling is origina- 
tive of the idea. It were a false philosophy to put asunder 
what nature has thus joined together. It may be pos- 
sible from a static point of view, but not from a dynamic, 
to regard feeling as purely subjective, a mere eddying 
back into itself of consciousness. A naturaKstic psychol- 
ogy is untrue to human experience when it treats either 
a feeling or an idea as a mere epiphenomenon of con- 
sciousness. 

There is one pragmatic test that may be applied alike 
in determining the validity of feehngs and of ideas: viz., 
that of constancy. It was a profoundly suggestive re- 
mark of Nitsch, that the reHgious consciousness perfects 
and justifies itself, when, "in the immediate life of the 
spirit a process is established through which the contents 
of the original feeling of God (Gottesgefiihl) objectifies 
itself in a constant manner." ^ This meaning may be made 
obvious by reference to our perceptions of external things. 
Thus every time we look at any given object, as a star, 
the same image regularly repeats itself to the eye. When- 

* System der Christ-Lehre, s. 25. 



232 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

ever we feel resistance to the sense of touch, as when we 
lay our hand upon a table, the same conception of an 
external object is formed in the mind. The process from 
our sensations to our perceptions takes place in a con- 
stant manner. If it should fail to do so, we should dis- 
trust at once our senses. We should have no valid knowl- 
edge of an external world, were not the relations between 
our sensations and our ideas of things generally uniform 
and constant. Similarly is it with regard to spiritual 
ideas or our belief in a supersensible reaHty. If the 
fundamental and universal moral and religious feelings 
of mankind were only occasional, if the ideas that arise 
from the sense of absolute dependence upon a power not 
ourselves were but a religious occasionalism — the capri- 
cious conceptions of a few,— then they might be looked 
upon as hallucinations, and religion itself as but a dream 
of the soul to which no reality corresponds. But, on the 
contrary, the process from the natural reUgious feeling to 
ideas of God is a constant one. The so-called intuitive 
ideas are constants of our primal feehng of existence. 
Religion is not a mental occasionalism, but a rational 
constant of human experience. As an apostle said, men 
"feel after Him and find Him."^ 

It is a striking fact that Jesus is more immediately 
and better known by us in his life of feeling than by his 
acts. His miracles may be accepted on the testimony 
of others who lived long ago and were eye-witnesses of 
his works; his feeling we know in our own most intimate 
experience. The imitation of Christ consists not only 
in seeking to think as Christ thought, and to do as he 
in our place might do, but more inwardly and vitally 
to feel as he felt — as he would have us feel in our thoughts 
of life and death, and toward all the changing circum- 
stances of life. Humblest believer, as well as learned 

^ This point is emphasized in my Religious Feeling, pp. ii8 seq. 



PERSONAL LIFE IN JESUS CHRIST 233 

scholar, reading in simplicity of heart these Gospels, 
cannot fail to understand how Jesus felt, and would have 
his disciples feel, whatever we may think. His feeling 
is the very atmosphere of the Gospels; in it the disciples 
drew vital breath, and we, too, may live daily renewed in 
spirit and in peace of heart. We may not understand 
aHke his teaching, as the disciples did not at once com- 
prehend the simple meaning of his parables, but in- 
stinctively and with one consent the world recognizes 
'and takes to heart something said or done which is felt 
to be most Christian. The promise to Mary is ever ful- 
filled among us, that by him the thoughts of many hearts 
shaU be revealed. Jesus' feeling toward God and man, 
in view of Hfe and death and the world to come, is an 
abiding personal influence. It enters into and pervades 
our human feeling, filling it to the full, purifying and 
transmuting it into something richer and diviner; even 
as in that first miracle which he wrought at Cana of 
Galilee for Mary his Mother's sake, the disciples found 
the water changed into wine. So also our worst feehng 
may be changed into our best, if his spirit manifests 
his transforming glory in it. 

His outward life, his daily example — how little is re- 
lated of it; how much we would like to know has been 
left untold — how much more might have been told us, if 
only some of those books, of which St. John speaks, had 
been written concerning many other things which Jesus did ! 
Perhaps some higher wisdom may have cleared away all 
these lesser circumstances of his ministry that above all 
the things that he did his Person might stand forth in 
its own commanding character, for all the passing gen- 
erations to behold its glory. From our most human 
feehngs, our deepest, happiest, and best, it is not hidden 
how he felt as he looked upon outward nature, or had 
compassion on the multitude, or met the tempter alone 
in the soHtude of the wilderness, or bore our sin and 



234 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

drained to the dregs the cup of man's suffering, or re- 
joiced in spirit as even in some slight beginnings of good 
works done in his name he beheld Satan fallen as hght- 
ning from heaven. We may learn something of what he 
meant when he said, "My joy/' "My peace," as he was 
about to go to his God and our God, and would not leave 
his disciples comfortless. This is the one sure gospel of 
his nfe, this the sunny openness and serene assurance of 
Jesus' divine humanity to those who have eyes to see 
and hearts to understand. 

Would we discern, then, the final significance of the 
personal life? Would we measure the distance that has 
been traversed from its lowly origins, through its age- 
long nurture at nature's breast, to the hour of its up- 
leaping into man's consciousness of himself and his God ? 
Put, then, the beginnings in contrast with the end — that 
star-dust concentrated in our sun, that "mind-dust," as 
the earliest sparklings of intelligence in nature have been 
called, in contrast with the final, luminous Christ-con- 
sciousness of God; put that least living cell beneath the 
eye of the Son of man who knows that nothing falls to 
the ground without the Father's notice; consider the 
way of life, what it means, from that to him in his thought 
reaching beyond the stars; think again and again, what 
does it all mean — the distance passed, the end reached 
in the fulness of time in him, the Christ in his transcen- 
dent consciousness of God? What but this: the revela- 
tion of the mystery of the worlds, the manifestation of 
the secret of the Spirit hid from the beginning, the per- 
sonal Hfe in the likeness of him for whom and by whom 
are all things ? What but this beginning and consumma- 
tion : our God is one God — nature is one revelation of the 
Spirit — we are made partakers of the divine nature — in 
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was made 
flesh? We have seen his glory, glory as of the only be- 
gotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE CREATIVE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIANITY 

The writer of the book of Acts speaks of a former nar- 
rative "concerning all that Jesus began both to do and 
to teach, until the day in which he was received up," as 
though his personal teaching and working were not ended 
with his Hfe on earth, and his manifestation of the word 
of life, which the disciples had beheld, was to be con- 
tinued in an unbroken fellowship with him. The Christ, 
then, is to be known, and his revelation of the meaning 
of the personal life comprehended, not alone from what 
may be learned of him in the Gospels, but further in the 
consciousness of those who receive his spirit and by the 
greater works of faith which from age to age shall be 
done in his name. Hence to know ourselves as we may 
be known, we must enter into the Christian experience of 
life. Psychology as a science fails to exhaust all resources, 
and leaves its task unfinished, if it is content to stop with 
the natural mind, and does not explore the depths, and 
estimate at their true value the riches of the conscious- 
ness of Hfe which the Christ has created and in which 
his spirit dwells. To some extent in the preceding 
chapter we have sought to know the historical Christ 
in the light of the world's continued experience of Christ; 
there are some further aspects of our knowledge of our 
own lives through Christ which remain more distinctly 
to be contemplated. A continuous revelation of both 
man and God runs on and on in the work of the creative 
spirit of Christianity. 

We have previously referred to the fact that personal- 
ity possesses a power of "creative synthesis," and is 

235 



236 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

characterized by a law of increase of psychical energy. 
This increase of spiritual re-creative power, which is a 
distinctive psychological character, is pre-eminently wit- 
nessed in the Hfe of the Christian man and the changed 
world of the Christian society. Both the new man and 
the new society are the spiritual creation of Christ. The 
Christian society becomes the fit environment of the 
Christian man. He reahzes his new life in it, and the 
same creative spirit is manifest in both. Hence theology 
becomes unreal if it is unhistorical ; it is devitalized and 
untrue to his words, which are spirit and Hfe, if it hardens 
into a completed logical system of doctrine which is no 
longer kept open and in thoughtful touch with the progres- 
sive revelation of the spirit in and through the mind of 
the church from age to age. The Christian conscious- 
ness is the continued creation of the Spirit of Christ. It 
is the collective mind of his disciples, enlarged by the 
history of Christian thought, enriched with the experi- 
ence of believers from every age, and illumined with the 
knowledge of God which increases with the years. It is 
knowing in part, and hence it can never be a closed volume, 
a completed theology, an end of inquiry. It is at once an 
inheritance and trust, yet a faith not to be kept in timid 
stewardship, as a talent hid in the earth, but to be put 
at interest in the new thought of each generation, that 
as knowledge grows truth may receive its own with in- 
terest. The Christian consciousness was begun in the 
fellowship of the life among those first disciples who 
went up into the upper chamber, where they were abiding; 
and then with that earliest company of beUevers who con- 
tinued steadfastly in the apostles' teaching and fellow- 
ship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers. It was 
begun then, but it was not finished. It has been and is 
a living and growing faith. 

Nothing that we know is as yet a finished creation, 
neither the earth, nor star, nor the heart of man. All 



THE CREATIVE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIANITY 237 

is in motion, all in process of revelation — the material 
worlds, the march of events, the life of the soul. We 
live in the progressive realization of a realm of moral 
ends and values, and, as we trust, the providential de- 
velopment of a supreme and universal good. To regard 
either the world around us or the Christian conscious- 
ness within us as static and completed would throw our 
best efforts to gain a theodicy into utter bankruptcy. 
Faith itself might fail to justify God's ways to men if 
•we should imagine either physical or spiritual develop- 
ment to be brought to a sudden stop, just as things are 
now, and all to stand motionless for final judgment. The 
leaven of truth has not yet leavened the whole lump of 
theology. Too many things in our beliefs wait for their 
season of ripening. We trust the patience of Providence, 
and wait on the Lord. Not till all things shall be ready 
will the last trump sound — that last, most joyous trium- 
phal call that, I think, the old world shall ever hear. Only 
because it is an unfinished world is it a world of hope — 
a world in the midst of the sin and the tragedy of which 
reason may make its great venture of faith in God, and 
human hearts may dare to love. We assume, then, as 
among the necessary postulates of faith that it is to con- 
tinue to live through growth, and that the mind of the 
church, of the Christian society as one whole, will re- 
peatedly find new adaptations to increasing knowledge, if 
it is to be in truth the manifestation of the energy of the 
mind of Christ in the thoughts of men. 

We are considering thus what the Christian conscious- 
ness and its development may be understood to be, be- 
cause we desire to inquire what light it may afford as we 
would gain a rational estimate of the meaning of life for 
us. For this purpose we will take our start from the 
so-called pluraHstic point of view. There are many 
minds, it may be said, and these most diverse in their 
beHefs; only abstractly or ideally can it be said that 



238 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

the mind of the church is one. It is true indeed that 
here we cannot start from the one and reason down- 
ward to comprehend in one the many; we must be plural- 
ists to begin with, taking account of the behefs of the 
many; or else an absolute unity of Christian conscious- 
ness would be but an abstraction, empty of reaHty and 
void of power. It is a fundamental fallacy ahke of dog- 
matism and of individual independence of behef (single- 
ism) that both start from the idea of truth as an absolute 
doctrine to be maintained either in one of our logical 
systems as a completed whole or, in the other case, as 
an absolute individual conviction to be held in isolation 
from other human experience. The truth itself is ab- 
solute, but it does not cease to be a truth though we may 
know it only partially in relation to all other truth. 
Revelation is no less divine if it is given to men relatively 
to their Kmitations of knowledge and the degree of their 
power to see truths largely and as a whole. We may 
well conceive that divine revelation is given to men 
naturally as the light is for many eyes to see, thrown 
over broad spaces, broken in many creeds, in divers 
reflections, yet the one revelation, the true light that 
lighteth every man coming into the world. But how, 
then, if this indeed be so, may we know what is the 
mind of Christ among so many minds? What is the 
consciousness of Hfe which the Christ creates? The 
task requires both humility and charity, as well as trust 
in truth though it be but partially revealed. But the 
method of such learning is simple as it is vital, and the 
assurance of such faith is not impossible. We are first 
to find whatever is given as real and truest in the Chris- 
tian consciousness of individuals, and then the answer to 
the question just raised is to be discovered in the whole 
social religious experience in and through which each 
individual gains his personal creed as his part and share 
in the general Christian consciousness of his age. We 



THE CREATIVE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIANITY 239 

are to bear in mind the principle that the individual 
mind and the social religious consciousness are not to 
be put asunder in a perfectly natural Christian develop- 
ment. 

The child in a Christian home is born into the Chris- 
tian consciousness as his spiritual environment. It is 
the light in which the child awakens to self-consciousness ; 
it is the atmosphere in which its mental Kfe begins to 
act. Baptism is at once a recognition of this fact that 
the child belongs from birth to the kingdom of heaven, 
and also the sign and seal of its right and part in the 
Christian inheritance. The Christian child may con- 
sequently be said to be elected in the sense that from 
birth it has been selected to find its life opening in adapta- 
tion to the Christian environment. It has this advantage 
from the start. But the personal Hfe can never fall 
wholly under a law of natural selection. Its election in- 
volves indeed natural aptitudes, themselves the resultants 
of its heredity, and also a favorable environment to 
which its instincts are fitted, together with happy in- 
fluences and opportunities for its growth after the spirit 
as a child of God. But the law of the development of 
the personal Hfe, nevertheless, is a law of hberty; per- 
sonal individuality is always a moral contingency in the 
world, and every child is born to find its own hfe and 
to determine its own character. It is not natural for the 
person born and coming to maturity in the midst of the 
Christian environment to fall wholly out of it. The 
Christian consciousness, though lost, may still remain 
in his subconsciousness, from which ideas and motives 
may at times return with compelling force over his con- 
duct. Even though he may be led to discard his early 
teachings and to adopt an aHen creed, the habit of Chris- 
tian thought will still cling to him and the ethical tone 
and vigor of it remain his chief good. Nevertheless, a 
personal creed, even though formed in a distinctive 



240 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

Christian environment, is a personal achievement. Other- 
wise it would not be real, not fully and truly personal. 
An opinion may come as the conclusion of an argument; 
a conviction is a summation of experience. And personal 
life is experienced in the social environment. 

Mr. James in his Varieties of Religious Experience has 
gathered together a large number of abnormal religious 
experiences, and searched in them for things not usually 
thought of in current physiological psychologies. From 
the pathology of mind he would learn more of the in- 
fluences that may play upon mind from beneath the 
threshold of consciousness. Spiritual pathology may 
thus demonstrate, when thoroughly investigated, un- 
wonted activities of familiar factors of personal life, and 
require an extension of psychology out into the spiritual 
border-land around our ordinary experience. In this 
direction psychical research may bring some reinforce- 
ment to belief against the denial of any distinctively 
religious nature or further possibilities of spiritual being; 
but in the normal consciousness of the Christian coming 
to himself in a genial religious atmosphere is to be found 
the evidence of things unseen; the character that he ac- 
quires through working out with others his sanest and 
best Hfe, abounding in its affections, firm in its purposes, 
and rich in its memories, will become to him the sub- 
stance of things hoped for. 

Having thus described in general the Christian con- 
sciousness, we may now point out more specifically some 
of the chief characters which have significance for the 
interpretation of our life. They are signs of the creative 
spirit of Christ within the personal world. 

I. Christian experience is characterized by a new sense 
of energy. In instances of sudden conversion, there is 
a new note of power. It has been described as "the ex- 
pulsive power of a new affection." It is felt as a signal 
reinforcement of the will. It becomes a consciousness 



THE CREATIVE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIANITY 241 

of power to pass unscathed through fierce temptations. 
It is evinced in a self-control impossible before. It is 
the formation of a new habit of will, as well as the open- 
ing of a new world of ideas, and the unloosing of hidden 
springs of feeling. Morally the new man in Christ Jesus, 
as he is rightly named, may become practically immune 
to temptations to which he is exposed, to which before 
he was too liable. Such spiritual immunity is a fact of 
religious experience as real as physical immunity from 
the infection of a noxious environment; partial indeed 
in many cases it may be, and not always hfelong; but 
often it has proved to be the acquisition of a remarka- 
ble and permanent immunity from temptation to which 
one had been subject. In other instances of Christian 
experience no sudden influx of spiritual energy is to be 
observed; but there has been a deepening of motive, an 
enlargement of purpose, a strengthening of convictions, 
and clarifying of ideals which indicate a coming without 
observation of the spirit that gives Hfe more abundantly. 
But whether so revolutionary as to be matter of common 
observation or becoming so quietly a second nature that 
it is apparent only in time as a growth and ripening of 
Christian character, the creative influence of Christ has 
been a renewing and transforming energy, working ef- 
fectually in the experience of an innumerable company of 
his followers. One might as well deny the actuaHty of 
electricity in the atmosphere as question the presence 
of this spiritual energy throughout the broad experience 
of Christianized humanity; experimental psychology has 
to deal with the fact of it, as it has to do with any other 
elements given in consciousness. It exists as actually 
as any transformation of sensation into perception, and 
it becomes dominant as no physical factor can be over 
the whole field of self-consciousness. 

This new influx of spiritual energy is conceivable in 
accordance with the law of psychical energy which Wundt, 



242 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

and others, as Mr. James, have observed as a distinctive 
principle of free personal activity.^ It is an inflowing 
of spiritual energy into the very, source and fountain of 
personal life. It manifests itself in increased personal 
vitality. With a new intensity of being the man uncon- 
sciously become Christian says with the apostle: "It 
is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me." So Jesus 
himself said: "I came that they may have life, and may 
have it abundantly." Christian experience is a new 
spiritual vitalism. 

2. In Christian experience one learns a right regard 
for self. Every person is at once both subject and ob- 
ject to himself. Introspectively we may make ourselves 
the object of our own consciousness, beholding ourselves, 
as it were, in a mirror, though often darkly. This ob- 
jective self is the formed self in distinction from the sub- 
jective, which is the formative self. It is this objectified 
self which may properly be esteemed in what we speak of 
as self-respect. This is the self as object of regard which 
is put in the second commandment on the same Hne as 
another's self: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself* 
The one is the measure of the other because both alike 
are moral persons in a realm 'of ends. Mr. Ward has 
rightly stated this relative objectivity of moral self-re- 
gard in these words: "The self that I love, that is the 
self that I know, is my self holding intercourse, having 
reciprocal relations, with a community of other selves, 
and with an environment to an indefinite extent resolvable 
into selves." 2 This, however, leads us to consider more 
particularly some other aspects of the personal Christian 
consciousness, which are involved in what has been just 
observed. 

^ "The amount of possible consciousness seems to be governed by no law 
analogous to that of the so-called conservation of energy in the natural 
world. When one man wakes up, or one is bom, another does not have to 
go to sleep, or die, in order to keep the consciousness of the universe a con- 
stant quantity." — {Human Immoriality, p. 41.) 

* Realm of Ends, p. 343. 



THE CREATIVE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIANITY 243 

3. As a result of the energizing of the spirit in Chris- 
tian experience there springs up a new ideal of the worth 
of hfe and its ultimate good. When Jesus said of old to 
the disciples, "Ye shall be perfect even as your Father 
in heaven is perfect," he bade them lift up their hearts 
to an ideal of themselves seemingly beyond possibiHty 
of human attainment. His word, spoken even to the 
multitude who hstened astonished, may be read as a 
promise as well as a commandment. It is the ideal of 
the consummate good of the finite person as perfect after 
its kind as is the perfection of the Father, Ultimate 
perfect reaKzation of the personal life has become the 
ideal illumining the hope of the Christian. The ideal is 
a formative factor in the Christian mind, as actual as 
is the energy of Hght in the vitaUty of the body. This 
religious psychology cannot be written in terms of phys- 
iology. The ideal created by Christ is immanent and 
potential in religious experience; the spiritual man knows 
himself as Hving after the spirit, and by the same spirit 
seeking to walk. The influence of this ideal is evinced 
through a progressive attainment of the higher ends of 
life. Its effectual working is the evolution of the Christ- 
like character. Attaining, and walking by the same rule 
already attained, not as already having been made perfect, 
yet pressing on to apprehend that for which one is already 
apprehended — such henceforth is the natural course of 
the new Hfe that Christ has created. Ever above himself 
rises the better self to be apprehended; ever also the 
seeking is a finding; ever the ideal self is the same self 
as the self now striving and conscious of imperfection, 
yet that self as it shall be, as it is in God's thought of it 
as made perfect in Christ. 

4. Moreover, the Christian consciousness is a sense of 
reconciliation with Hfe. This is no mere negative resigna- 
tion; it is a positive harmony of the self and its world. 
It involves a sense of the forgiveness of sin, and an in- 
ward assurance of final victory over it. 



244 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

When it was reported one morning to Carlyle that 
Margaret Fuller d'OssoH had made up her mind to be 
reconciled to the universe, that grim philosopher replied: 
"She had better be!" But how to be reconciled with 
the world around one, is too often the hard problem of 
a human Hfe. Nature seems to tolerate our existence for 
a Httle time, and it is soon over with us. Its forces are 
armed against us, and our health and happiness is but a 
brief truce before the last fight for it, which is foredoomed 
to defeat. The least of the lowest Uving things may 
poison our Hfe at its springs, torment us with fevers, fill 
consciousness with pain, defy our skill to cast them forth, 
and win final triumph over all our science. Nor does the 
human world — the very environment that should be 
adaptation most friendly to us — fit itself happily always 
to our personal needs; too often it becomes heedless to 
the cry of distress, pitiless of suffering, while the lives of 
great numbers are a hard struggle for the right to Hve. It 
is needless to dwell on the contradictions of the good 
by the evil; along every way of life lurk the destroyers 
of its values, and, instead of finding themselves dwelling 
secure in a realm of ends, the peoples of the earth wander 
in a world of confusions and ceaseless strife. Hence, 
philosophy finds a facile descent into pessimism, and 
faith, having done all, is called to stand, and face a world 
in arms. 

All the more striking, therefore, appears there concilia- 
tion with Hfe of the person who has gained power to 
think and to feel in the spirit of Christianity. His is no 
vain compromise of self with his circumstances, no mere 
truce with evils that He in wait for him, no false peace 
at any price, nor final surrender even in death to the 
last enemy. His is a deep, thorough, and abiding rec- 
onciHation with life, a peace which nothing in the world 
around him may take away. For it is first of all and 
above all oneness of the spirit within him with the Spirit 



THE CREATIVE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIANITY 245 

which is in all and over all — even God blessed forever. 
From that central, immanent oneness of the personal 
life with the divine there proceeds a sense of unity with 
nature and humanity, with all worlds and intelligences, 
and with himself also in the harmony of his purposes 
and desires with the ends of all other personal beings in 
earth or heaven in the pursuit of the highest moral good. 
This reconciliation, and the abiding peace of it, appears 
often most signally in lives where the strife has been 
hardest, where the immediate environment has been the 
most hostile, where sufferings have been intense and 
sorrows most desolating. We have received the witness 
of this superior spirit in countless examples of Christian 
fortitude and good cheer, and we believe because we have 
been eye-witnesses of it. We may have seen it in some 
faces, still present and radiant in our memories, though 
they have long since passed into that spiritual transcen- 
dence which is a glory too pure for us to see and live. 

This joy and peace of the personal life in harmony with 
God and his world was most divinely known in the inner 
consciousness of him whom prophets foretold as one 
who should bear our griefs and carry our sorrows, the 
one whose face is depicted over the altars of sacrifice to 
this day as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. 
It was he, the suffering Messiah, who had fathomed to its 
deepest depths the awful mystery of human woe, who 
came from the garden, which the sin of the world had made 
his Gethsemane, to bear our iniquities on the cross; it was 
he who could leave with his disciples these words: "My 
joy," "My peace." He would give to his chosen friends 
his glory, glory which he had with the Father before the 
world was. Not here and now for us is the irreconcilable- 
ness of the world and the spirit to be finally abolished. 
"Sometimes," said brave Martin Luther, "I believe, 
and sometimes I do not." But this dualism of good and 
evil which runs through history and is known in the 



246 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

inner conflict of every life, has been once for all overcome. 
God is God over all, blessed forever, and this we know 
right well, for in the Christ on this earth was the peace 
of God which passeth understanding. 

The progress of our thought, starting as we did from 
the religious experience of the many, has already carried 
us beyond a purely individual standpoint, and from the 
concurrence of the many Christian experiences we gain 
the broader conception of the one Christian conscious- 
ness — the truly cathoHc mind of the church. But, as we 
enter the field of historic Christianity, do we not find 
paths of thought everywhere crossing one another, and 
nowhere authoritative signs to direct us in the one true 
way? On many sides theological speculations will in- 
vite us, while long-established dogmas will stand in the 
way of adventurous inquiries. How, then, is cathoKcity 
to be anything more than a name ? How are we to make 
real with the phrase, the mind of the Christ in the mind 
of the church? 

It is to be noted at once that the mind of Christ is not 
something for us to make, but to find in the mind of the 
church from age to age. It is something which our 
theologies cannot construct in their passing systems; it 
is the truth realizing itself in the progressive revelation 
of the spirit of Christ until he shall come. So real is 
the teaching of the spirit that there is apparent even 
amid all diversities of doctrines a common recognition of 
some things as essentially Christian. Indeed it might 
be said that it is not so much in what men have persuaded 
themselves to beHeve, but what for Christ's sake they 
cannot help beheving, that the mind of Christ is made 
known among his disciples. There is, we are assured, 
one spirit; and the working of one and the selfsame 
spirit is always present, and its continuity is not broken 
in the development from age to age of the faith of the 
church. No church or creed has all of it, or may put 



THE CREATIVE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIANITY 247 

limits to it; but something of it is in all churches and 
creeds, and catholicity is the faith once delivered, and 
still being delivered, to the church. 

This valuation of the Christian consciousness, it will 
be noticed, puts us into a different attitude toward his- 
torical and institutional religion from that assumed by 
the individuahst — the position, as it might be called, of 
theological sohpsism. For we recognize a principle of 
social solidarity in thinking and believing; not to regard 
it is to neglect a natural means of coming to a knowledge 
of the truth. Such principle, however, of common reason 
is not necessarily inhibitive of individual variations or of 
the acquisition of specific differences in reHgious think- 
ing and feeling, as the process of natural selection is not 
a reduction of natural life to uniformity. But an inde- 
pendence of thought, unrelated to the common mental 
environment, would prove a fruitless intelligence. It 
may be a sport, so called, of mental nature rather than a 
variation fitted to survive. A certain law of continuity 
in the development of Christian doctrine holds true, as 
the law of conservation of energy in the natural world. 
The reHgious life is mobile and free at its growing tip, 
while it remains rooted in the common soil and is con- 
servative of its own stem. 

The contents of the Christian consciousness are to be 
studied in the history of its development. Its meanings 
and values are to be learned, and scientifically formulated 
as doctrines of faith, very much as the factors of physical 
evolution are discoverable by observation of the succes- 
sive forms of organic life. We may trace the line of our 
spiritual descent both structurally and functionally alike 
in the institutional structure and formulated creeds and 
in the functioning of the church in the Hfe of humanity. 
In this manner we may know the Christian consciousness 
of Hfe so far as it has yet been attained. 

This valuation of the mind of the church, it should be 



248 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

noticed, is gained in a manner quite different from that 
of philosophical abstraction or from a purely logical 
development of theological creeds.^ 

The faith of Christianity was not merely a "deposit"; 
it is a development. A sound working-theory of develop- 
ment is much needed for its interpretation. Upholders 
of ecclesiastical and theological systems are apt either to 
ignore entirely all principles of the development of Chris- 
tianity, or else to intrench themselves in logical deduc- 
tions from their own institutional forms and received 
creeds. Newman's theory of development, and the so- 
called "catholic" movement that received its intellectual 
baptism from Newman's thought, sadly betrays this 
lack of a true biological conception of development. It 
is rather a dialectical construction of an artificially selected 
portion of church history, and not a truly genetic inter- 
pretation of the mind of the Christ throughout all Chris- 
tian life and thought. It is at once as true and as false 
in its deductions as a theory of natural history would 
be if it were based merely on a classification of the fossils 
of successive geological periods by their external forms 
and marks, without any phylogenetic account of their 
relations and order of descent. Hence such pseudo- 
cathoKcism is stationary, but not prophetic. Moreover, 
so far as such views show any respect for evolution, they 
fall into the mistake, apparently unconsciously, of the 
former, but now obsolete, theory of preformation, and 
seemingly have no idea of the later and now generally 
accepted view of evolution, which is in scientific circles 
better known as epigenesis. The chick is not preformed 

^ A dialectic method of development of ideas (such as has been received 
from Hegel) is vitiated throughout by its abstraction from the concrete 
realism of history, and emptied of contents by its resolving history into a 
course of logical movement. An ideahsm that leaps at a jump to the pure 
absolute, and then, passing through the finite returns to it again, is but a 
play of reason, an intellectual game of battledore and shuttlecock, wherein 
between theses and antithesis common sense is kept continually in the air. 



THE CREATIVE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIANITY 249 

in the egg; the determinants of its specific growth are 
given in the egg, which are developed in vital relations 
with its environment. A preformation of the whole 
body of the church as existing in an apostolic egg — orders, 
ritual, dogmas, hierarchies, popes, modern AngHcan 
bishops, and all — takes us back in our religious philosophy 
to the eighteenth century, when the preformation evolu- 
tionary doctrine of Haller held the ground against the 
thesis of Wolff, which now, in these post-Darwinian days, 
has become the scientific view of natural history. At 
no point in the past may a specific form of the church 
be fixed as final and absolutely normal, any variation 
from which is to be regarded as schismatic, and not to be 
received without an authoritative commandment from 
the Lord for its creation. A conception of Catholicism 
which claims historicity is profoundly unhistorical so 
far as it ceases to be thoroughly vital and dynamic. If 
indeed we would make earnest with the idea of a con- 
tinuance of the incarnation in the Hfe of the church, we 
shall hold it to be true that the divine presence of the 
Christ has entered into and abides in the life of humanity 
as a continuous re-creative energy, and consequently that 
Christianity neither in form, thought, nor deed is to be 
put under guard and kept fast as a sacred heritage; it is 
a Kving faith, implanted by the spirit in the mind of the 
church, to grow in knowledge and to bear the fruit of 
its hfe fresh every season. Was it not the Master who 
described himself as a sower going forth to sow ? And was 
not the first principle for our understanding the mind of 
Christ given in the word of the greatest of the apostles: 
"If any man hath not the spirit of Christ he is none of 
his"? The true cathoHc church, then, has right and 
power henceforth, as it has had in the ages past, to be- 
come what it must be in order that in Christ's spiritual 
authority it may continue to live, and to five more abun- 
dantly. 



2SO THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

These paragraphs may seem to lead us somewhat aside 
from the straight way of our inquiry into the nature 
and final significance of personality, but we bring from 
this digression an added reason for the interpretation of 
it which we have already gained from successive points 
of view. For the Christian consciousness, the creation 
and historical continuance of the mind of the church, is 
in itself consequence and evidence of a higher energizing 
than any mechanical, purely physiological knowledge of 
mind can account for or reduce to lower terms. In this 
distinctively religious manifestation of the inner personal 
Ufe there is no contradiction or violation of the ascer- 
tained laws of the natural functions of the mind; the 
Christian consciousness is immanent in the natural con- 
sciousness, while it transcends it. The church in its origin 
and development, and in its objectified idealism as well 
as prophetic expectation, is a means toward personal 
ends of Hfe that are supersensible and of values not to be 
assayed in temporal utilities; in its communion the per- 
sonal life realizes its supernal meaning. 

5. One other effect of the creative spirit in Christian- 
ity should be distinctly brought out — its power to change 
its own environment. 

In a previous chapter we observed the power of per- 
sonal Hfe to react upon its environment; this transform- 
ing power is a signal evidence of the personal influence of 
Jesus continued through Christian history. The Hfe has 
become the hght of the world, and its shining changes 
the whole aspect of the world. The energy of the Chris- 
tian life goes forth to make all things new. It is creative 
of a new society. It has a gospel of social salvation. 
In recent times this sense of the social high calling of the 
church and its inner obligation to render a Messianic 
service to all peoples has become a dominant character 
of the common Christian consciousness. Several fea- 
tures of it are noticeable as having special significance 



THE CREATIVE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIANITY 251 

for the richer interpretation of the personal life. One 
is the fact that social salvation is to be wrought through 
personal contacts and. the transmission of personal influ- 
ences. The power must continue to be personal, though 
it may work through institutions. Another correlated 
truth is that, unless the human environment is purified 
and vitaHzed by personal influences, social reform will 
prove but transient. A society from which it is sought 
to drive out evil spirits chiefly by legislative prohibitions, 
but which is not purified by the air and sunshine of the 
spirit of Christianity will be like the house of the parable, 
which was swept and garnished, and left empty, for seven 
other more evil spirits to return and dwell in. It is too 
often forgotten in the zeal of moral reform that to pro- 
hibit is not to save, to destroy is not to fulfil. 

Another character of the creative energy of the new 
Christian society is its prophetic expectation. It is hope 
for the whole world. It has a gospel for all nations. At 
once it overleaped the barriers of Judaism, and became the 
gospel to the gentiles. It fails not with the years of un- 
fulfilled promise, and the waiting centuries behold no 
diminution of its exhaustless hope. Of the increase of its 
dominion there is no end. The nations are at war, and 
civilization is again at stake; but international Christian- 
ity shall find another opportunity for its greater work of 
faith in healing the wounds of the peoples. 

Now, therefore — for this is the conclusion to which 
these observed tendencies all point — such energies of the 
spirit in the world's experience of Christianity could not 
be so if after all human society were only a human or- 
ganism — a mechanism with no spirit of Hfe in the wheels. 
Such aspects of Hfe would not appear if moral being and 
social salvation were simply matters of physiological 
concern and environmental conditions. Industrial wel- 
fare is a matter of spiritual attainment as well as an 
economic condition. The general good, which it is the 



252 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

aim of all social effort to promote, can be secured only 
as human beings are recognized as spiritual persons, 
and are treated as beings, who, according to Kant's defini- 
tion of persons, are ends in themselves and not means 
for others. 

From the point of view which we have now reached, 
looking back again along the way which our reasoning 
has traversed, we may Hft up our eyes, and gain a broad 
world-view. Within the horizons that must always 
limit our farthest knowledge, we may behold all these 
things as a whole. The Christian world-view marks a 
high and serene attainment of personal life. It is broad 
and comprehensive in its sweep and contents; nothing 
human is foreign to it, all nature is its possession, final 
good is its hope, and God is its trust. The personal life 
rises to its supreme height when, humbled in the felt 
presence of the divine ideal, it is exalted in worshipful 
aspiration, and can answer: O Lord, thou art my God! 

Here, on the utmost heights of our being, where experi- 
ence ends and above us and beyond is cloud and in- 
finity, our personal interest in life cannot end. The 
person who in the feeling of absolute dependence and of 
Christian exaltation of spirit will say, "My God," can 
he with assured reason say also of the Eternal: "Thou art 
my dwelling-place" ? 

To this final question of the meaning of personal life 
we are now come; all the ways of life which we have 
been following lead up to this last most personal ques- 
tion of the future life. What may the course of life al- 
ready traversed lead us to expect concerning the un- 
tra versed way before us ? What promise does the known 
hold of that unknown Hfe? 



CHAPTER IX 

THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 

It is usual to approach the question of our immortality 
from the moral and the metaphysical side. From the 
nature of the soul, from the incompleteness of this earthly 
life, and from the moral values of our present experience 
it is reasoned that as spiritual beings we are not destined 
to return to dust and ashes hke the beasts that perish. 

The course of inquiry which we have thus far followed 
leads us to approach the question of our personal survival 
after death from an opposite direction. We now ask: 
Does the natural course of life from the beginning have 
still further significance? We would reason concerning 
the hereafter from the evolution of hfe up to its highest 
realization in the present. In view of what is known of 
the growth and potential energy of embodied mind, can 
we entertain a reasonable hope of immortahty? 



Approaching it thus from the nature-side, the first 
question that confronts us is this: Is the way of hfe 
further on than we now may see blocked by any known 
facts? Does anything in experience thus far gained put 
an end to the possibility of self-conscious existence here- 
after? 

From the ascertained relations of mind and body, ir- 
respective of all theories of them, no negative presump- 
tion against personal survival need necessarily be drawn. 
On one theory, and one only, would the possibiHty of 
the future continuation of personal consciousness be 

253 



254 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

blocked: if self-consciousness is nothing but a by-product 
of nerve functioning, thought only a material accom- 
paniment of organic processes, then, indeed, the wear 
and tear of this physical mechanism is our personal de- 
terioration, and its final breaking up may be the end of 
us. If a brain of known molecular matter, which may be 
resolved into chemical elements, is the efficient cause of 
mental states, there is no real personal Hfe now, and 
nothing further may be expected after the dissolution of 
the brain. If we hold that the present configuration of 
matter is the invariable constant, and consciousness the 
variable function, it follows with a mathematical logic 
that the latter has no existence apart from the former; 
wipe the one off the slate and the other goes with it. Such 
materialistic hopelessness, however, would be absolutely 
necessary only on the further assumption that our pres- 
ent knowledge of the cellular structure of the brain is so 
complete as to preclude the supposition of some more 
recondite structure of matter with which more funda- 
mentally psychic functions are connected. It might be 
urged that physiology must carry us to the end of the 
possibilities of matter before it can affirm confidently that 
mental action is necessarily conditioned upon the known 
organization of the brain. This aspect of the question 
we may consider better in another connection. 

Our discussion has already shown that this gross ma- 
terialistic theory of consciousness is not in the line of 
fact after fact which the evolution of life presents. We can 
go but a little way beyond the confines of the inorganic 
world into the realm of intelligent behavior without 
discovering that we have entered into a world of activities 
and ideas which cannot be reduced to physical properties, 
and which are distinguishable from aimless atomic motions. 
On the contrary, so far as ascertained facts go, or physical 
analysis may reach, it might with as much probabiHty 
be affirmed that matter is the product of mind as that 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 255 

mind is a function of matter. The idealistic monist has 
full as much right, if not more, in the scientific field as 
the materialistic monist. The half-way suggestion, which 
Huxley with some hesitation put forth, that mind is an 
epiphenomenon, a kind of by-product of the body, like 
the whistling of a locomotive, was itself a by-product of 
an immature science, and it has ceased to play any con- 
siderable part in the more critical researches of modern 
psychology into the nature of the dualism of mind and 
body. The reduction of these two terms to a function 
each of the other, is an altogether too easy solution of 
the organic complexity of human personality. It is an 
example of what the logicians call pseudo-simplicity. In 
this hasty answer to the problem of spiritual life both 
the terms — body and mind, the x and the y of the prob- 
lem — are arbitrarily interchanged in the equations, and 
both are reduced to the same value by making each come 
out equal to zero. But the personal life is positive in 
both its terms; each means something, and our philosophic 
reasonings are not true to the life if they result in giving 
nothing but a phenomenal negation of any reality of 
being. 

Although it is sometimes popularly assumed that 
science has put the soul out of existence, and left the 
case of the spirit against the flesh a defeated cause, never- 
theless, as Mr. James has noticed, it is hard to find in 
recent books worthy of scientific consideration "a pas- 
sage expKcitly denying immortality on physiological 
grounds." Among writers who regard mental processes 
as organically conditioned by cerebral processes, few would 
venture so far as to aflSrm that thought is a function of 
the brain as motion is a function of a Hmb, or bile a 
secretion of the liver. James has rightly observed that 
there are other theories of the brain's function than the 
view that the brain produces thought. These theories 
of the admitted functional relations of the cerebral and 



256 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

mental processes permit one to hold a purely agnostic 
position concerning the possibilities of continued con- 
scious existence under other conditions hereafter; they do 
not preclude belief in immortality, nor would they be 
contradicted if on other evidence the fact of personal 
consciousness after death should ever be scientifically 
demonstrated. Doubtless such positive knowledge of the 
continuance of mental life under changed functional rela- 
tions with material conditions would at once greatly mod- 
ify and extend any working- theories of the interdependence 
of body and mind that scientifically determined facts may 
now enable us to form. James, for example, maintains 
that the transmission theory of the function of the brain, 
which he prefers, is quite compatible with belief in im- 
mortality.^ Professor Clifford evolved an ingenious and 
in some respects plausible theory of "mind-stuff," which 
he regarded as constitutive of the reality of the universe.'' 
This view seemed to him to render beHef in a continued 
existence of a spiritual body untenable. We doubt if 
this is necessarily so. He regards consciousness as "the 
combination of feelings into a stream." It exists at the 
same time with the combination of nerve-messages in a 
stream. It follows, he holds, that when the stream of 
nerve-messages is broken up, the other stream of conscious 
feelings will go with it; it will be resolved into simpler 
elements. The metaphor of a stream, which he uses, 
does not compel this conclusion. For two streams from 
different sources may flow for a measurable distance to- 
gether, and again, under changed conditions, separate and 
follow different channels. Or the distinctive qualities of 
one stream, the grosser and more obvious, may be fil- 
tered out, while the other is not resolved into its con- 
stituents. Death might conceivably be the final filtration 
of the mind-stuff from the molecules (themselves only 

^ Human Immortality, pp. 14 seq. 
^Lectures and Essays, 3d ed., vol. II, p. 72. 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 257 

another form of mind-stuff according to Clifford's view) 
with which for some time they may be associated. It is 
a non-sequitur that a spiritual conscious existence, if it is 
supposed to co-exist now with the natural body, must be 
supposed to cease with the dissolution of the natural. 
This conclusion would follow only if the combinations of 
mind-stufif with and without consciousness, which Clifford 
supposes, were given up, and the brain regarded as the 
productive cause of mental functioning. Kant's view, on 
the contrary, that the body is not the cause but a limiting 
condition of thinking is defended as scientifically justified 
by Schiller: "It will fit the facts alleged in favor of ma- 
terialism equally well, besides enabHng us to understand 
facts which materialism rejected as 'supernatural.' It 
explains the lower by the higher, matter by spirit, instead 
of vice versa, and thereby attains an explanation which 
is ultimately tenable, instead of one which is ultimately 
absurd." 1 

We find, consequently, nothing in the facts of nature 
positively known to inhibit the venture of faith in the 
hope of life after death. Nor is there aught in death it- 
self to deny the expectation of Hving again. To die is a 
process and act in the course of living, and in dying there 
is not a single moment or act which would be contradicted, 
which might not occur just as it does, should a departed 
spirit return and give us indisputable scientific proof that 
it had survived the process and act of dying. In other 
words, death, so far as known, proves nothing concerning 
what may be just beyond death. It is a fact of experi- 
ence that carries personal hfe, with all that it has be- 
come and means, out of our present vision. It not merely 
seems to end all; it suggests also much more about our 
life of thought and love, its more intimate relations with 
nature and further possible meaning and evolutionary 
value than an eye, Hmited as is ours to a small fraction of 

1 Riddles of the Sphinx, p. 289. 



258 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

the scale of ethereal vibrations, can see, or the subtlest 
analysis of elemental energies can disclose. For a man 
to die is the most intensely interesting moment and 
profoundly significant fact of his Hfe. 

Death among men comes apparently without discrimina- 
tion or purpose. It seems to be a final contradiction of 
us, denying our very selves often when we have most 
reason for being ourselves most fully. Against the af- 
firmation of the spirit which is in man is put suddenly 
the abrupt denial of death. But this denial as well as 
the affirmation of life must have reason, if indeed the 
world is one of rational order. Unless there is no reason 
at all in nature, unless Hfe itself is the very height and 
exploitation of the irrational, both death and Hfe, the one 
as the other, must have reasonable use and meaning. 
In proportion as we may discover such meaning in life, 
we may trust that it is to be discovered some time, if not 
now, in death. What the reason in death and for it may 
be we can now but dimly surmise; yet we are not wholly 
without signs of its possible place and service in evolution, 
and its ultimate value also in a realm of ends.^ 

We reason thus that survival after death is naturally 
possible, so far as we have any scientific knowledge, but if 
we endeavor to conceive of it, imagination fails us, and 
difficulties of realizing how this may be beset us on every 
side. The real trouble with belief in personal immortality 
seems often to be not so much lack of reason for it as 
default of imagination before so great a draft upon the 
power of the heart of man to conceive it. Sensuous 
imagery fails to symboHze the supersensible. Thus at 
times the thought of the unnumbered dead in the count- 
less ages past appalls us — the measureless succession of 
the generations that have perished from the earth. We 
discover the bones of prehistoric men together with the 

^ For a discussion of this natural relation and value of death to life I 
may refer to my volume on The Place oj Death in Evolution. 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 259 

bones of animals, buried in the same dust from times 
that run far back through unknown cycles of years. 
They lay down together, those cave-dwellers and the 
beasts that perished, as they alike were made of the 
same earth earthy; how shall they have escaped one 
common lot? Where have the spirits of men through 
these interminable ages been waiting, what have they 
been doing? In what regions of infinite space have these 
unnumbered dead, from other worlds also it may be 
than ours, found their abiding-place? In what societies 
may they have gathered? In what realms of activities, 
in what pursuits are they engaged? And if these all 
live again, or if only those most fitted to survive have 
entered into life elsewhere, how has it come to pass that 
after these long ages of their existence and their increas- 
ing knowledge and mastery of the forces of the universe, 
amid which this little earth has its orbit, these spirits of 
the dead, the keen, active, most intelhgent of them all — 
they who when on earth attained power of mind to dis- 
cover hidden secrets of nature's power and to compel 
energies from outlying space to do their bidding and 
carry their messages around the world — they, neverthe- 
less, have found no means, invented no methods of making 
themselves known to us and by intelligible and unmis- 
takable signs? Why is it that they have acquired no 
power to come back and make themselves known in this 
their birthplace and early home? No wealth of their 
vaster knowledge do they bring to our toiHng sciences; 
no gleam of their light falls upon our faith, growing dim 
while the ages pass and the vision fails. Or if, as some 
would have us believe, a few departed spirits have gained 
transient and confusing control of minds as exceptional 
mediums of their communication, why long since have 
not such possibilities of intelligent converse with mortals 
been mastered by the spiritual powers? Why have they 
not made themselves in literal truth for our enlightenment 



26o THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

familiar spirits ? Amid possibilities so great, why results 
so trivial? 

This utter failure of regular and clear communication 
between different worlds or separate spheres of possible 
spiritual existences, our own and the realm of disin- 
carnate intelligences, presents a speculative difficulty to 
belief in their survival, if we think of the universe only 
as a natural order, without superior moral requirements 
and higher ends. Looking at it as a system of natural 
forces only, we may indeed wonder why the ethereal 
medium pervading space might not have been made the 
means of interstellar communications, if there are intel- 
ligences superior, may be, to ours in other worlds. If 
we are able to find in the lines of the solar spectrum an 
alphabet by which we have learned to read messages 
concerning their physical structure that come from 
farthest stars, we may well wonder why spirits from 
other worlds, if such there be, have not long ere this com- 
pelled these radiant energies to convey some signs of 
their existence to us, by some means found some language 
by which they might communicate with us even from the 
utmost bounds of space. Our wireless telegraphy is not 
dependent upon this earth's atmosphere; we use ethereal 
pulsations, the powers of the heavens, in carrying our 
thoughts around the world; why should not thought be 
carried to and fro far as these ethereal waves may reach ? 
So, as we have just observed, we might ask and wonder, 
and without answer, if, as science believes, the universe 
is one system and formed of similar constituents in all 
the worlds of space. 

All such questioning is at once set in a different light 
the moment we consider the world as a moral order to 
which the natural order has been made subservient. 
Moral ends of being may set limits which otherwise would 
not exist or be insuperable. The questioning in which 
we have just indulged is not to be answered; but the 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 261 

difficulty involved in it may be located where it will not 
stand in the way of a reasonable faith. And rightly to 
locate difficulties that cannot be removed may enable 
us to pass by them. Such is the case when we consider 
that such intercommunication as we have just imagined 
might be a natural possibility, if there are spirits in dif- 
ferent spheres to avail themselves of the means of it; 
but for us here and now such communication may be re- 
strained by higher moral reasons, for purposes of ultimate 
good; as a regular method of supermundane telegraphy, 
quite conceivable in itself considered, such communica- 
tion may not at present find fit time and use in the moral 
order, in the methods and seasons of the divine education 
of our particular world. If there is truth in Lessing's 
idea of human history as a divine education of man, it is a 
large truth capable of extension over many perplexities, 
and of use in enabling us to wait for the solution of 
matters which life on this earth is not yet mature enough 
to be taught. 

This earth may need to be shut up from too vast and 
free an intercourse, in order that it may learn its own 
lesson through a prolonged training, before ever the 
human mind be set free to hold converse with the heaven- 
lies. For the race as for individuals, for the universal 
good at last, limitations upon otherwise natural pos- 
sibilities may be most salutary and beneficent. If excep- 
tions should appear, they would not be miracles, as they 
seem, but rather occasional departures from the regular 
course of the divine education of man for special needs. 

Moreover, the education of moral persons, like our- 
selves, may best be conducted by the impartation only 
of such knowledge as may fit them for their immediate 
tasks, or subserve their present growth; too great il- 
lumination just now might be too dazzling and blinding; 
no man, we read, can see God and live. Too much celes- 
tial knowledge imparted all at once might defeat the 



262 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

very purposes of the education of man in capacity for 
knowing even as he is known. It was the tempter, in 
the old story of the garden, not the "spirit of education," 
who would have the first man become in a moment, by 
one hasty bite, as one of the gods in knowledge. Now 
souls have knowledge enough on which to grow. God 
does not overfeed his children here. 

Other conceptual difficulties, of which there are many, 
overshadow the natural belief in immortality; it is need- 
less to enumerate them. We refer to them, in passing, 
because they are to be recognized as difficulties of the 
imagination more than of the reason. At times we feel 
an utter prostration of the imagination in the presence 
of the vast mystery in which we dwell by our little fire- 
sides. These are "obstinate questionings," but they are not 
obstinate denials to be put in the way of a rational work- 
ing faith in the spiritual life here and hereafter. It is 
true that the old question of the master in Israel will 
be often repeated by the master in science with the ac- 
quisition of new knowledge and its seeming contradiction 
of past experience: "How can these things be?" For 
with the widening of the horizons of knowledge the sense 
of the vaster, outlying mystery increases. Thus when 
the earlier and easier conceptions of the abode of departed 
spirit had to be put away among the childish things of 
man's intellectual infancy, the new knowledge of the 
stellar universe removed the heavenlies far from us, and 
faith faltered where imagination failed. But the same 
new knowledge, broadening with the years, has opened 
on every side glimpses into some larger reality, and left 
us wondering, as children again, amid things before un- 
dreamed of in our philosophies. Yet these new knowl- 
edges open only to close again before the scientific imagina- 
tion. It is well to remember that the elements which 
modern scientific researches have verified are themselves 
incapable of visible representation, and are unimaginable 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 263 

although not unknown. They can be discovered in their 
effects, followed in their action, and represented by mathe- 
matical symbols; but we find it hard to conceive, well- 
nigh impossible mentally to visuaHze them. They were 
at first speculative aids of science. Their fitness for use 
as a basis for constructive physical science is enough to 
reassure us that seeming impossibilities of imagination 
are not necessarily impossibilities of reason. It is always 
possible that the conceptual limits which shut knowledge 
in, may in one direction or another open out for further 
vision. This holds true ahke in our converse with the 
natural and the spiritual world. In either realm a single 
beam of clear knowledge, striking through our surround- 
ing ignorance, might clarify our science and dissolve as 
in the twinkling of an eye our scepticisms. It is so with 
reference to the question of our future life; there is nothing 
in present knowledge to inhibit us from avaihng ourselves 
of the speculative aids of faith; nothing known to pre- 
vent us from making the most of such indications of 
man's survival value as may appear. This may be seen 
more readily if we make the following supposition. 

Suppose that one or two of all the multitude of de- 
parted spirits should appear in some verifiable manifesta- 
tion ready to open intelligible communication with us. 
Suppose that their claim to be heard should be subjected 
in our psychological laboratories to prolonged scrutiny, 
submitted to control-tests, and by repeated experiments 
verified as strictly and thoroughly as, for instance, the 
family history of the several radium rays has been worked 
out. Suppose that to this extent, not to carry our hy- 
pothesis too far, these spiritual intelligences had demon- 
strated that their hitherto unsuspected energies should be 
recognized in the play of physical actions and reactions, 
that at least they could act as the "sorting demon" of 
Maxwell's scientific imagination was conceived capable 
of doing in thermodynamics. What, then, on this sup- 



264 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

position might be the consequences for our existing knowl- 
edge of the material world and its laws? It might well 
be startling, but it would not be utterly destructive of 
our science. It would prove evolutionary rather than 
revolutionary. Such discovery of hitherto unrecognized 
spiritual energy amid natural forces might have very 
much the same effect on modern science that De Vries's 
observations of plants in the very act of mutation is 
having on the Darwinian theory of variation. It does 
not contradict the principle of natural selection, while 
it may render somewhat more intelligible other factors 
of evolution. The supposed revelation from beyond our 
world of experience might have much the same con- 
sequence in our knowledge of nature that the discovery 
of radium has had on the atomic theory; at first seem- 
ingly destructive, it is found to be complementary. Since 
scientists have had time to think it out and to follow it 
out experimentally, it has given to the atoms a new 
significance, and revealed within them a world of forces 
before unthought of in science. No doubt in the light of 
any such spiritual manifestations as that supposed, as 
in the advent of any new, verifiable knowledge, our 
working-theories would have to be revised, our concep- 
tions of things sensible and supersensible clarified, en- 
larged, harmonized. Perhaps the whole circle of our 
theologies might be pushed farther out into the encom- 
passing mystery of divinity. But old truths would not 
be lost though changed; nature so far as really known 
would suffer no violence; and the clearer and more serene 
would become our assurance that all things work to- 
gether for good in a universe of ordered reason and moral 
ends. 

The way from the present to the future life is not 
closed by science, it is only lost in ignorance. This is 
the preliminary point to be kept in mind as we seek to 
find in present experience what signs may be given of 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 265 

the continuation of personal life beyond immediate ex- 
perience. For it is to be remembered that death might 
continue to occur, and not a single fact in the dissolution 
of the body and disappearance of consciousness be altered, 
even though, as just supposed, some unexpected demon- 
stration should be given us as proof of the continuance of 
personal life after death. The absence, therefore, of any 
positive evidence to the contrary leaves us free to con- 
tinue our search for any present signs of the ultimate 
significance and destiny of personal being. Our further 
inquiry, consequently, still keeping close to nature, takes 
this direction: What positive material, if any, may be 
found in nature and personal experience from which to 
construct a reasonable conception of the future life? 
We put the question in this double form — a reasonable 
conception — for, on the one hand, an argument for im- 
mortality that fails to open some imaginative outlook 
toward the hereafter, however transient or indefinite the 
momentary vision may be, will not answer fully the 
reHgious feeling, nor satisfy the cry of the heart; while, 
on the other hand, no discussion of immortality, however 
devotional or comforting to many it may be, that does 
not bring belief in the world to come into some direct 
and harmonious relation with our knowledge of things pres- 
ent, can meet the demands of rational intelligence. 

From the direction which the evolution of life has al- 
ready followed, and from the point of view where man 
now stands, looking backward and forward, some idea 
is to be gained of the possible continuation of the same 
way of life; very much as a surveyer, from the direction 
of a line already laid out, may dot on a map its further 
extension through a region still unsurveyed. We may 
gain a bird's-eye view of this field of inquiry by glancing 
at those theories of the future life that have been main- 
tained with sufi&cient probability to enable them to sur- 
vive in modern thought. 



266 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

I. The ancient theory of metempsychosis, or trans- 
migration of souls, has reappeared in a tentative manner 
in recent philosophy. Professor Ward, for instance, in 
his recent volume ^ admits it for consideration as a view- 
having some plausibility, although he does not regard 
it as more than a possible view of immortality. It is 
presented with greater elaboration, as a metaphysical 
basis for beHef in future continuance of life, in Mr. 
Schiller's Riddles of the Sphinx (chap. XI). He pre- 
supposes a plurality of ultimate existences, whose spiritual 
evolution corresponds with the material evolution and in- 
spires it. By a kind of pre-established harmony a two- 
fold process of natural selection is supposed to occur, 
during the course of which these original spirits, or germs 
of spirits, find successive re-embodiments in harmony with 
their degrees of psychic development and their measure 
of moral capacity. The objection that this would not 
secure the consciousness of personal identity, is met by 
the answer that it would secure so much of memory as is 
necessary for an ascending spiritual development, and 
that in proportion as the life so continued through suc- 
cessive bodily forms becomes more and more worth re- 
embodying, intimations of the past would enter into its 
existing consciousness; while, in its perfecting, memories 
would lengthen, and the intellectual and moral values 
of the whole series of incarnations would be treasured 
up in the final and immortal consciousness of personal 
being — the several stages of the past being, as it were, 
recapitulated in the maturity of spiritual being, as biology 
traces a general recapitulation of the previous course of 
organic evolution in the development of the embryo. 

Quite irrespective of the claims of the theory in itself 
to consideration, it calls attention to some elements of 
value which should not be overlooked in any philosophic 
view of immortality. One such is Mr. Schiller's asser- 

^ The Realm of Ends, pp. 401 seg. 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 267 

tion that there may be degrees of memory hereafter, 
corresponding to degrees of life now. He says: "If we 
can conceive a future life, the reality of which depends 
on memory, it will admit of less or more. And, if, as 
seems natural, the extent to which the events of life are 
remembered depends largely on the intensity of spiritual 
activity they implied, it follows that the higher and in- 
tenser consciousness was during life, the greater the in- 
tensity of future consciousness." ^ Hence he is able to 
say of the lower forms of animal life: "They have a 
future Hfe, but it must be rudimentary" (p. 385). He 
can thus consistently say further that "the lower phases 
of evolution would not generate sufficient psychical energy 
to attain to any considerable degree of immortahty," 
while he believes, in many cases at least, that he may 
answer affirmatively the question whether "man has 
reached a sufficient height of spiritual evolution so that 
the human soul, the phenomenal self of our earth-hfe, 
persists as human " (p. 393). This would relieve somewhat 
the difficulty which meets all views of natural immortality, 
that of conceiving how those who have fallen during their 
earthly life to the level of the brutes, whose passion and 
sin seem to have dehumanized them, and who have be- 
come unfit to survive, nevertheless by the mere accident 
and shock of death can in a moment be made over into 
spirits capable of moral perfecting. According to this 
view the continuance of their individuahty would be 
only an obstacle to the development of their spirits; so 
that their personal consciousness would lapse into oblivion 
while their spiritual potentiality, whatever might be left 
of it, would return to its source, to begin over again from 
the bottom a new Ufe. The fitness of the phenomenal 
self to adapt itself to the conditions of a higher life is thus 
made the test and measure of personal survival. "We 
need not suppose that personal immortality will be forced 

^O/*. a/., p. 385. 



268 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

upon those whose phenomenal self has not desired it nor 
prepared itself to survive death, and who make no eflfort 
to preserve the memory of the past, nor yet that those 
should be balked who have really and intensely desired 
it" (p. 402). 

Whatever measure of truth there may be in these re- 
flections, the chief objections to this theory are that it 
requires several subsidiary hypotheses to buttress its 
main proposition. In accounting for the facts of heredity 
it is obliged to imagine a singular parallelism between 
physical generation and a selective adaptation of spirits 
awaiting their moment for fit embodiment — a parallelism 
which carries further back into the unknown, and with 
increasing conceptual difficulty, Leibnitz's theory of 
monads and pre-established harmony. Though Mr. 
Schiller struggles to fit his view of transmigration into 
the frame of natural heredity, there may be more truth 
than we know in the assertion that "we are descended 
from angels and ascended from the beasts" (p. 403). 
It may also be admitted that this view easily leads to a 
thoroughly optimistic conception of a progressive evolu- 
tion, during which the evil fades more and more into a 
negative element, while the good becomes the dominant 
factor of an ascending life, the goal of which is an end 
of all evil and the attainment of the supreme good. These 
are elements to be contained in a distinctively Christian 
hope of immortality. 

2. Another view, in partial agreement with that Just 
mentioned, which has found advocates in recent theo- 
logical thought, is the theory of conditional immortality. 
Personal immortality is regarded as a prize of life to be 
won; only those who become fit to live shall survive 
death. Others could not live in the heavenly environ- 
ment; that which is of the earth earthy shall pass away. 
From an evolutionary point of view much may be said 
in favor of this doctrine of the survival of the fittest only 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 269 

after death. It is a conception of the development of 
personal life in harmony with laws of Hfe that obtain 
in organic evolution and devolution. Life in nature may 
be lost as well as gained. Degeneration beyond re- 
covery is not unknown; as some parasitic forms have 
lost their original specific characters; casting off one 
after another organs which they possessed as free swim- 
ming bodies, they have become mere parasites. Such 
degeneration is related to the impoverishment of the 
nutriment required to maintain the organism at its full 
vitality; biologists have not found means of determining 
whether by a gradual increase or change of nutriment 
the process of retrogression into sedentary organisms, "the 
vicious circle of parasitism," might be reversed, and lost 
organs and functions be regained.^ Analogously, it might 
be reasoned that a human being may become dehumanized; 
in a course of Hfe that starves and stunts the higher in- 
tellectual, moral, and spiritual powers, a person might 
fall out of humanness and descend to the level of the 
brute. So men have seemed to become denaturalized. 
From lack of sufficient moral nutriment in the social 
environment, or by self-wasteful viciousness or consum- 
ing passion a brutal variety of humanity has been pro- 
duced; into this dehumanized class men and women even 
who were born in circumstances favorable to a fairer 
life have fallen. From the faces of some such unfortunates 
all traces of the spiritual seem to have disappeared, and 
on them there is written the mark of the beast. Sin is 
a consuming fire of the image of God in man; unquenched, 
it leaves only a blackened ruin of the human. Some 
criminals appear to have sunk so far below the level of 
the human that they have become apparently incapable 
of any moral perception of their crime; and, more than 
that, personal feeling itself seems lost — they appear in- 
capable of realizing their own desperate condition. Taken 

* For examples see my Through Science to Faith, pp. 197 seq. 



270 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

just as they appear to be here and now, unfit to live, self- 
delivered unto death, beyond the power of human justice 
to set free, or the reach of charity to save, are such beings 
already so self-consumed that death may render to them 
only the last mercy of returning them to the dust and 
ashes from which their spirits once were quickened, and 
an infinite pity blot their names out from the book of 
life? We may not judge; divine pity may have no limit 
to its saving grace. But from a biological point of view 
both ascent of life to survival-value and descent beneath 
the human to the animal and the earthly are alike con- 
ceivable. Theologically, there is to be maintained a trust- 
ful reserve of judgment concerning ultimate issues of 
individual lives beyond the grave; the love of God is 
not to be measured by our thoughts. The most that 
may be said of this hypothesis of conditional immortality 
is that it enhances the personal motive so to five as to 
be worthy of immortahty. And as a theodicy, or specula- 
tive justification of God's ways toward men, it serves as 
a suggestion of a possible method by which whatever is 
personally salvable shall be redeemed, and all conscious- 
ness of suffering pass eventually away from a universe 
of perfected life. 

3. An older and still prevailing view is that the soul 
is naturally immortal. Personal being is said to be a gift 
of God, which, once given, is not subject to recall. Chris- 
tian theology is indebted for this belief in natural im- 
mortality to the ideas of Plato more than to any explicit 
teaching of the Scriptures. In the conception of a single, 
immaterial soul-substance rehgious faith has long pos- 
sessed a refuge and a fortress for faith in immortality. 
For better or for worse, for time and for eternity, the 
germ of deathless being is assumed to have been im- 
planted in every child of man, and for the ultimate issues 
of these unnumbered multitudes of souls God's justice 
and grace must be trusted. 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 271 

As belief in the indestructible nature of the soul had 
its origin in philosophy, so it has had its use in defense of 
reHgious hope from philosophical doubt. But it did not 
enter as an avowed factor into the apostolic preaching 
of Jesus and the resurrection; nor is it an idea essential 
to the maintenance of the Christian faith in the eternal 
life. A belief, however, that has prevailed so largely in 
religious thought, and at the same time entered so deeply 
into religious experience, cannot be lightly dismissed be- 
cause it may not be altogether conformable to modern 
habits of thought. Judged by pragmatic tests, this be- 
lief must have in it some vital element of value, for it 
has worked as a personal truth in the lives of a long suc- 
cession of beHevers. What such element of vital value 
may be, and whether it may be conserved in some other 
conception of immortality, may be better judged as we 
search further in present experience for any signs of our 
future continuance. Before passing to this inquiry, one 
other philosophical view needs to be noticed. 

4. It has been thought by many metaphysicians, as 
well as by some writers of scientific training, that the 
individual consciousness shall ultimately flow back into, 
and coalesce with, the universal or divine life. So some of 
the religious mystics have felt that the limited, individual 
life is at once lost and saved in union with God. Cor- 
responding to a pantheistic philosophy there has developed 
what might be called a pan-humanistic idealism — the con- 
ception that these Httle drops, the frail spherules of distinct 
human existences, themselves momentarily precipitated 
from the infinite, after their brief hour of being, are 
destined to be resolved into the Infinite One. Finite 
personality is to be made perfect in its comprehension 
in the Absolute.^ The value of the self-life is not, how- 

^Mr. Bradley says: "Where do we pass from Nature as an outlying 
province in the kingdom of things, to Nature as a suppressed element in 
a higher unity? " — (Appearance and Reality, p. 494.) 



272 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

ever, to be regarded as utterly lost in absorption into the 
Absolute One; as Mr. Bradley further says: "Myself is 
certainly not the Absolute, but without it the Absolute 
would not be itself,"^ 

It would be idle to toss aside as merely so much meta- 
physics these more or less pantheistic, or pan-humanistic 
ideas. In some form they have always appeared in phi- 
losophies and religions from Plato's idealism to Spinoza's 
Absolute; in Plotinus's loss of self-consciousness in God, 
in the mystic's vigil, and Tennyson's prayer for "a new 
vision of God." There must be some truth at the root 
of a metaphysics that has lived so long and that still 
brings forth fresh fruit in our season. Such truth of 
value in these more impersonal ways of conceiving of 
immortality may appear later on, if we begin our in- 
quiry with that which is nearer and more real in the 
common sense of life, and from that firmer ground pro- 
ceed to more speculative contemplation of our possible 
future life. We turn, then, from these various theories 
to follow out those principles and tendencies given in 
present experience which look forward for their completion 
beyond this present existence. From the facts and forces 
of our present personal knowledge must be gathered the 
reasons for a natural and hence satisfactory hope of the 
future consummation of the life which we know now in 
its beginnings in our personal consciousness of it. 

In general we are to keep in mind that faith in im- 
mortality bears a direct relation to the sense of the moral 
values of life. In proportion as these run low, it dimin- 
ishes. As the worth of personality is enlarged and en- 
riched in the present consciousness of living, the hope of 
continued life hereafter will enter more fully and firmly 
into the thought and purpose of a man's heart. A life 
worth living now will be esteemed well worth living here- 
after. And no conception of immortality can be great 

1 Ibid., p. 260. 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 273 

enough if it fails to comprehend and enhance all that 
makes life worth living now. A thoroughly satisfactory- 
existence for us after death must be intensively rich as 
well as extensively prolonged. It would be inclusive in 
its contents of all the precious things of past experience 
as well as able to possess itself of futurity. Otherwise 
it would not be fulfilment of our personality, not our 
immortality; it would not prove to be the gift of eternal 
life worth our seeking for until we find it. 

What, then, are the strands of personal life that must 
be conceived as running on unbroken, woven together in 
the wholeness of the life to be desired hereafter? What 
energies and elements are now so essential to a full per- 
sonal consciousness that we must assume them to be 
constitutive factors of the future life? We should grasp 
firmly in our reasoning these essential factors of the life 
which in the Scriptures is said to be life indeed. The 
integration of them all in personal consciousness here- 
after is the substance of things hoped for. Furthermore 
we shall find it an easier task for reason and a nobler 
venture of faith to hold all these elemental factors of our 
present personal being together in the hope of immortality. 
It is better and wiser to trust in their full integration in 
our future experience. It is also a simpler and a happier 
vision of imagination and a serener peace of heart so to 
think of our present selves as continuing to be hereafter 
in all the human relations and personal powers and af- 
fections that render our fives now rich and full. This is 
by far more reasonable than it is to stop short in our hope 
with a half-truth of fife, to put up with some shadowy 
philosophic idea of immortality in which individuafity is 
merged in some indefinite spiritual universal; or to 
imagine ourselves as resting forever in some Elysian 
state of mind, vacant of those activities and friendships 
which we now esteem as the happiest and most intimate 
meanings of our personal experience. The assurance of 



274 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

immortality naturally grows greater as we find ourselves 
enabled to fill the thought of the future Hfe full to over- 
flowing with the Hfe abounding in the present. If we 
single out any one element of it, and should be com- 
pelled to conceive that alone to be continued, while other 
vital strands are broken off short, then such single 
cord will have to sustain the whole weight of the argu- 
ment for immortality. To this idea the saying of One of 
old may be appUed: a "house divided against itself shall 
not stand." The carrying on all together the full and 
harmonized values of present existence, bodily, mental, 
spiritual — continued living with all our mind and heart 
and strength — this only is the assurance of faith which 
is the substance of things hoped for. Insistence upon 
this affirmation of personal wholeness in considering the 
reasons for belief in personal survival after death is to 
be urged Hkewise for the pragmatic value of the argument; 
for this hope in the continuance of us in all that makes 
us what we are now fits best into our present needs and 
action; it works better than any partial and attenuated 
hope of some possible immortality. Loss of faith in the 
future life may occur from hoping for too Kttle when we 
should hope for all. A half-hearted faith may be broken- 
hearted at the shock of death which seems to sunder aU 
personal ties; for us immortality must be all, or it is 
nothing. 

We proceed, accordingly, to take up one after another 
certain primary elements which are constitutive of self- 
hood, and to consider them separately and in their co- 
working as positive factors of the personal Hfe ever- 
lasting. These primary factors may be characterized as 
follows: (i) An integrative power of memory. (2) A 
self -identifying activity in consciousness. (3) A con- 
scious responsiveness to an external universe. (4) A 
self-affirming energy — the wiU to Hve. These factors 
are complementary, and are involved, each in the others, 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 275 

in the wholeness of personality. There must be a de- 
gree of memory sufficient to form a ground for self- 
identification; the ego can define itself as subject only 
as distinct from an object; and the whole field of con- 
sciousness must be pervaded by the will to continue 
living — the positive charge of the field of personal being. 
What we are aware of as our very self is not exhausted 
in the affirmation, I am; it is interfused with the con- 
sciousness, I act, and in acting I am what I am. The 
possibihty, therefore, for an individual to Hve again will 
depend directly on his ability to maintain the possession 
of these integral elements of his being in sufficient degree 
at least to enable him to regain and to maintain his seK- 
consciousness as a unified whole. 

What indications, then, are there in experience that self- 
consciousness in its integrity may be continued, its several 
elements unbroken by the apparent sundering of its phys- 
ical bands in death? First to be considered is the pos- 
sibihty of the maintenance of some degree of memory, 
of enough recollection of the past to make the future 
real. 

At this point, from the side of physiological psychology, 
the question rises abruptly before us: How can memory, 
which is now so organically bound up with neural proc- 
esses, so obviously dependent on cerebral structure, be 
supposed to survive the dissolution of the body? Un- 
doubtedly memory is a brain-habit as well as psychic 
functioning; if the one is stopped short, how can the 
other go on ? But it is a too-short cut from physiological 
investigations to the metaphysical conclusion that all 
memory vanishes when the cerebral cells cease to func- 
tion. Before we may leap to that conclusion an immense 
field of inquiry would need to have been scientifically 
traversed and surveyed — a field of unknown possibiHties, 
only the outskirts of which experimental psychology has 
as yet reached. Along introspective ways also toward 



276 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

the central depths of personality we must seek to pene- 
trate, unless we are to abandon all research into the 
intimate reality of our nature. There are far-reaching 
potencies hidden in matter and energizing in mind, 
which are to be followed to issues beyond our immediate 
sensory knowledge and their secrets discovered before 
any science can say : Here memory comes abruptly to an 
end; at this moment, in one last pulsation of the heart, 
love is gone forever. Science, which frequently has 
passed from one close compound to another, which has 
knocked long at many a barred gate to find it at length 
unexpectedly opened as by lightest touch of some new 
thought, can affirm no bound of being to be final, no 
door to be closed forever. It can fij£ no horizon Hne for our 
life, and it would betray its own working-creed were it to 
say: What we now know of the living and the dead is 
aU, and there is nothing better than it. It is no mere 
fancifulness, it is the poetry of science in these fines of 
Clough: 

"Hope evermore and believe, O man, for e'en as thy thought 
So are the things that thou see'st; e'en as thy hope and 
belief. 
Go with the spiritual life, the higher volition and action, 

With the great girdle of God, go and encompass the earth. 
Go with the sun and the stars, and yet evermore in thy spirit 

Say to thyself: It is good; yet is there better than it. 
This that I see is not all, and this that I do is but little; 
Nevertheless it is good, though there is better than it." 

We have just used the phrase, a sufficient degree of 
memory. Critically regarded, what measure, then, of 
memory may be deemed to be requisite for the continued 
unity of personal fife ? 

A minimum of memory may be detected in the earliest 
traces of organic habit. A slight modification of the 
structure of an organism by repeated acts may loosely 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 277 

be called a beginning of memory. So, likewise, those 
neural co-ordinations which after repeated conscious effort 
become automatic habits, such as motions of muscles 
which need only to be touched off to go on of themselves 
without troubling our consciousness, may be included 
under the general term memory. And from simplest 
protoplasmic modes of reaction through the formation 
of habits and the rise of instincts up to intelligent acts 
of recalling the past, and by experience of the past modi- 
fying the present, the genesis of memory proper may be 
traced as a physiological process. The diflSculties, how- 
ever, in accounting for aU the facts of memory merely 
in physiological terms increase the higher up the scale 
of memory- values we ascend; the descriptive words 
that seem to fit the earlier physical facts, and to rep- 
resent sufficiently what occurs in the formation of habit- 
ual actions, fade away into metaphors and become im- 
perfect and vanishing representations of what occurs in 
the complex consciousness in which our past becomes a 
definite guiding factor of our present thought and ac- 
tion. We have already discussed the psychic problem 
which remains unsolved after the physiological factors 
in memory have been delineated and their role accounted 
for (pp. 77 seq.). But at this point, in relation to the pos- 
sibility of a future life in some embodiment, we should 
look again to this physiological side of memory to dis- 
cover whether it presents an obstacle or an aid to a con- 
ceivable belief in personal immortality. For, while at 
first glance the demonstrated fact of the vital connec- 
tion now between memory and the neural structure of 
this body may be regarded as a difficulty in the way of 
such beh'ef, nevertheless this same knowledge of the 
physical basis of mind may open a larger possibility of 
life both in body and soul. How this may be so will 
appear as we examine further the relations between the 
neural connections and the psychic dispositions which 



278 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

are integrated in true memory, and as we consider also 
the degree of memory requisite for self-identification 
whether in this life or another. Here we take our point 
of departure from the fact that some neural connections 
are at present indispensable conditions of memory. This 
fact is demonstrated by the interruption of memory 
through physical injuries, and in some cases the com- 
plete loss of the consciousness of personal identity. A 
blow on the head may strike at once out of mind all 
recollection of what was in mind the moment before the 
blow fell. Experimental psychology has shown that 
local lesions of the cerebral cortex may occasion loss of 
some kinds of memory, such as memories of words, or 
visual memories, or the power to associate the images 
derived from one sense with those of another in normal 
motor-responses, as we do when we articulate a written 
word or write a word which we hear spoken. To this 
physiological basis of memory experimental psychology 
adds another series of mental facts; there are other 
processes in conscious memory which are not to be iden- 
tified with the neural conditions, and without which 
only a very rudimentary kind of memory is possible. 
Distinctively psychic factors remain in the analysis of 
an act of recollection, which cannot be directly resolved 
into any cell-images, or derived from supposed traces 
left in the brain. Thus careful experimentation discloses 
a radical difference between a mechanical repetition of 
a series of numbers or nonsense-syllables, for example, 
and a memory of meanings, as when one recalls a written 
line or a whole verse from the meanings of some of the 
words. Mr. McDougall has adduced considerable ex- 
perimental evidence to justify the view that there are 
fundamental differences between habit and memory 
proper, that they do not obey the same laws, and that 
memory proper is not conditioned solely by material 
dispositions of the brain. Analysis leaves a distinctive 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 279 

and irreducible psychic element in the memory of mean- 
ings. In true memory we find these two factors, habit 
and meaning, coexisting and co-operating in various 
proportions, and "always meaning is immensely more 
effective than habit as a condition of reproduction or 
remembering."^ He holds that the most wonderful of 
aU forms of remembering, the visualization of complex 
scenes in some cases is explicable only on the supposition 
that "the complex of visual sensations serves as a clew 
.that brings to consciousness a meaning that was latent 
in memory." 2 This difference between a mechanical 
association and a true memory is illustrated by the dif- 
ference between remembering the location in space of 
a series of points of light thrown for a moment on a 
screen, and the memory of a face that may have been 
seen only once; in the former case there was a minimum 
of meaning, while in the latter meaning was at its maxi- 
mum. "There persist psychical dispositions, each of 
which is an enduring feature of the psychical structure 
and an enduring condition of the possibihty of the re- 
turn to consciousness of the corresponding meaning."' 
This view admits on the one hand aU the ascertained 
facts of the physical basis of memory, and on the other 
hand it harmonizes with them the play back and forth 
from the psychical side; it offers a conceivable explana- 
tion of memory intermediate between the two incon- 
ceivable extremes of mere materialism and an uncondi- 
tioned spiritual theory of memory. It is similar in the 
main to the view which Bergson has presented with in- 
cisive metaphysical acumen in Matter and Memory. As 
supplementary to Bergson's conception of the ideas that 
enter into pure memory, McDougall's analysis of facts 
from the physiological side is the more convincing. We 
dwell upon this double aspect of memory because it is a 
postulate of our further reasoning concerning the pos- 

1 Body and Mind, p. 333. ^Ibid., p. 338. *Ihid., p. 343. 



28o THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

sible continuation under other material conditions of the 
personal life. The future life must be the prolongation 
of the same life after both kinds physical and psychical, 
in a similar mode of energizing, although not neces- 
sarily by the same means or instruments. Thus we take 
up the supposed difficulty into the very idea of personal 
immortality. We assume as granted that hereafter as 
now both material connections of some kind with nature, 
and also psychic energies must in some co-ordination 
work together in the realization of personal conscious- 
ness. These two elements, the natural and the spiritual, 
are bound together from our birth and woven together 
throughout our lifelong experience, and we should not 
continue to be fully ourselves, nor would our past Ufa 
remain as our heritage for the life to come, if essential 
parts of personality were to be so utterly dissociated by 
death as to be incapable of any future reconstruction, 
if indeed death could put asunder forever what has been 
so joined together in life. 

Another point in this connection remains to be de- 
termined. Granting that some degree of memory must 
thus be assumed as necessary for a self-identifying con- 
sciousness hereafter, the question still remains: What de- 
gree of memory may prove sufi&cient for the recovery of 
the personal sense of existence from the sleep of death? 
The minimum of meaning necessary for such recovery 
seems not difficult to determine. In order that we may 
continue to live personally two separate points at least 
should be discriminated in consciousness, one as past 
and the other as present; and the two must be connected 
as parts of one experience, each as a point in my experi- 
ence. All spatial terms, such as points and lines, it is 
true, are metaphorical, and hence may become mislead- 
ing when used in interpreting mental life, as Bergson 
has so urgently insisted. But not forgetting that in the 
use of such terms we are dealing with symbols of living 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 281 

realities, we may suppose that a line drawn between 
two separate events, connecting them as one experience, 
may represent the minimum degree of identifjdng memory, 
below which personal life cannot persist, above which it 
may rise to clear self-consciousness. We may go still 
further and suppose that if a single unifying memory 
between the time before and the time after death be 
granted, the possibility of recollecting whole periods 
and of recalling many memories of the past life on earth 
might thereby be realized under future conditions of 
suggestion. The analogy of sleep and awakening renders 
clearer how this might occur. Sleep is an interruption 
of consciousness accompanying a functional depression 
of a complex system of neural connections. But it is 
not a structural break either of body or mind. Awakening 
from profound slumber is not a re-creating, but a recol- 
lection of oneseK. Both physiologically and psycholog- 
ically to awaken, it may be said, is to remember. Some- 
times in a quiet awakening from a deep sleep we seem 
actually to re-collect and recover ourselves. At first a 
certain vague feeling of awareness steals over us; there 
is a mere perception of light, then a more conscious effort 
to locate ourselves, but after a moment or two in the 
mental illumination of some distinct memory we come 
fully to ourselves. So out of the quiet deeps of sleep we 
rise again to the life of a new day, to find once more the 
burden of care or sorrow which had been laid aside in 
sleep, or to greet with fresh spirits the joy and promise 
of another day. The special point to be noticed is that 
for such recovery of self from sleep a single memory 
may sufi&ce; by means of a moment's sense of what I 
was I know what I am alive to do. The psychical sig- 
nificance of this analogy is not to be lost because during 
sleep the physical powers continue to function, while 
in the unawakened slumber of death they pass from our 
observation and, so far as this body is concerned, cease 



282 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

to exist. The point is this : if mental life is now so bound 
to this body that it may temporarily disappear, yet at 
slight stimulus be recalled, this indicates more subtle 
relations between mind and body than we may fully 
apprehend; and in some similar way the self which can 
awake from sleep may recover itself in other physical 
environment than we now can discern in our present very 
limited perception of nature's radiant forces; in finer 
touch with these, in closer relations to embodiment more 
fitted to its spiritual nature the self may survive and 
retain potential memory enough to regain self-awareness, 
and to find itself again in the unseen universe. So far, at 
least, as suggestive of possibilities of awakening hereafter, 
awakening here from sleep may go. 

The psychic potentiality of memory is indicated in 
some abnormal mental states. That a personal being 
has some latent, physically indissoluble power of self- 
return and self-identification, in despite of interruptions 
or total losses for a time of self-identity, appears probable 
in view of many facts that have been observed in cases 
of lesions of the cerebral areas, of hypnotic suggestion, 
and of dissociated personality, and the recovery from 
such broken states of consciousness to normal condi- 
tions. To these phenomena of abnormal consciousness 
we shall refer again; it is enough in this connection to 
notice this single fact, that disappearance of the psychic 
energy from the field of our observation cannot of itself 
alone be construed as an absolute loss of potential psychic 
energy. Its temporary inactivity under partial inter- 
ruptions of its physical relations raises rather the further 
inquiry how long the psychic power may lie latent with- 
out destruction of its germinal potency, and, moreover, 
whether under other relations to external influences than 
these bodily relations to nature, in some other clime and 
freer air, it might not conceivably spring up and bear fairer 
flower and richer fruit. We know not what secret of em- 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 283 

bodiment lies hidden at the root of the essential vitalities 
of the personal being. We know not that this mortality- 
is the only embodiment with which it may clothe itself 
or be clothed upon. While perhaps a soul may be ca- 
pable of self-destruction by continued sin, it may be in- 
capable of suffering corruption from without itself. 

We may go somewhat further than this and without 
violence to present knowledge conceive that the psychical 
may have in itself some active power of overcoming 
death. It may not be whoUy passive in the process of 
physical death. It may be possessed of a natural abiHty 
to recall itself under the stimulus of other conditions 
than this earthly life. It may arouse itself from the 
sleep of death in response to more ethereal influences 
of nature than we can be aware of; quickened by these 
to enter into freer and larger intercourse with the uni- 
verse than it could in this earher, earthlier stage of its em- 
bodiment. It is reasonable to suppose that this psychic 
energy has its law of conservation, and shall prove itself 
to be a persistent power through whatever changes of 
form or modes of activity it may pass. 

These suggestions may seem to carry us too far from 
our immediate inquiry concerning the minimum amount 
of memory necessary to continued self-identity, and they 
may be deemed too speculative; but speculative thought 
is sometimes useful if only to show that more things are 
possible than we are wont to think. We return to our im- 
mediate question concerning memory in its relation to 
the future life as we call again attention to the fact, 
which Mr. McDougall has rightly emphasized, that 
there is observable a reciprocal relation between the 
meanings and the sensory contents which are associated 
with the meaning of things. "Each meaning, as it comes 
into consciousness, tends to restore the sensory content 
which serves as its clew, when the idea is evoked from 
the physical side."^ That is to say, a memory-image, 

1 Op. cit., p. 343. 



284 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

for example, may be recalled from both sides: either by 
a sensory stimulus calling up an idea or by an idea re- 
calling a sensory complex; either may furnish a clew to 
the other. We simply would extend into the possible 
life hereafter this power of an idea to recall what once 
sensibly suggested it, as well as its recall by the recur- 
rence of what through the senses first suggested it. Some- 
thing in new spiritual surroundings might be stimulus 
enough to revive ideas of the former life on earth, or 
some ideas find stimulus enough amid changed conditions 
themselves to bring back former scenes. By suggestion 
either from without or within a soul awakening in an- 
other world, memory might be quickened, and thus the 
personal identity maintained unbroken. In regard to 
the question of self-identifying memory hereafter Mr. 
McDougall consistently holds that, "though it is not 
possible to say just how much of what we call personality 
is rooted in bodily habit, and how much in psychical dis- 
positions, yet it is open to us to believe that the soul, 
if it survives the dissolution of the body, carries with it 
some large part of that which has been gained by 
intellectual and moral effort." And (although he intro- 
duces as a supporting hypothesis a conception of "image- 
less thought," which seems needless) he admits the pos- 
sible alternative that the surviving soul "might find 
under other conditions (possibly in association with some 
other bodily organism) a sphere for the application and 
actualization of the capacities developed in it during its 
life in the body" (p. 372). 

Mc Dougall keeps at the front the idea of the soul, which re- 
cent psychology has preferred to leave very much in the back- 
ground. At the conclusion of an exhaustive discussion he 
enumerates as follows the capacities which he thinks should be 
attributed to it: "We may, then, describe the soul as a being 
that possesses, or is, the sum of definite capacities for psychical 
activity and psycho-physical interaction, of which the most 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 285 

fundamental are: (i) The capacity of producing, in response to 
certain physical stimuli (the sensory processes of the brain), the 
whole range of sensation-qualities in their whole range of in- 
tensities; (2) the capacity of responding to certain sensation- 
complexes with the production of meanings, as, for example, 
spatial meanings; (3) the capacity of responding to these sen- 
sations and these meanings with feeling and conation or effort, 
under the spur of which further meanings may be brought to 
consciousness in accordance with the laws of reproduction of 
similars and of reasoning; (4) the capacity of reacting upon the 
brain processes to modify their course in a way which we cannot 
clearly defiine, but which we may provisionally conceive as a 
process of guidance by which streams of nervous energy may be 
concentrated in a way that antagonizes the tendency of all 
physical energy to dissipation and degradation" (p. 365). 
These capacities he regards as the minimum that may be at- 
tributed to the soul. He holds his theory of the soul as "inter- 
mediate between these two extreme views, that, on the one hand, 
which denies to the soul all development, and therefore all that 
constitutes personaHty; and, on the other hand, that popular 
view which ascribes all development of mental power and char- 
acter to the persistence of psychical modifications" (p. 371). 
The former is purely mechanistic, the other is purely spiritual- 
istic. 

It is not necessary, according to this view, to fall back on the 
theological behef in a special act of divine power in the gift 
to the individual soul of immortahty. That is an assumption 
of divine "occasionahsm" with regard to the world to come, 
which with reference to this world is supplanted generally in 
modern philosophy by the profounder faith in the divine 
immanence. 

Additional force is lent to the reasons Just presented, 
when we take into account the other character of personal 
being, which is involved — the self-affirming energy, or 
the will to live. We have to recognize a psychic power 
to control physical processes for its purposive use. 

The personal dynamo is the will. The power-house 
of personal motivation and action is the psychical nature. 



286 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

There is a normal dominance of the psychical over the 
physical in all right living; any subjection of the spirit 
to the flesh is a descent from the level of the human, a 
reversal of the motive power of character. Moreover, 
the ordinary psychical control of the physical for the 
daily conduct of life may on occasion rise to a super- 
lative height; there is then an overmastering access of 
spirit with which the entire nervous system is quivering, 
and at times becomes so overloaded and flooded with 
power so sudden and overwhelming as to throw it out of 
intelligible vibrations; very much as a connection of tele- 
graph-wires may become overcharged in an electric 
storm. At other moments the spiritual flame may seem 
to break out as a consuming fire, in which, if prolonged, 
the material frame itself must pass away in fervent heat. 
Often also has it been witnessed that the influx of spir- 
itual energy, flooding the consciousness with light and 
power in view of some supernal truth or in the presence 
of some great duty, has given even to the weakest vic- 
tory over physical fear and suffering; it has fused all 
the elements of being into a clear singleness of will, and 
held the whole body and mind obedient unto death in 
the endurance of a supreme devotion. 

A critical psychological analysis of such instances 
serves to bring out distinctive spiritual marks impressed 
upon the physical habits in such control and use of the 
bodily functions. We do not refer to anything like alleged 
"stigmata" on the bodies of saints. No anatomical dis- 
section of the cortical mechanism, indeed, or microscopical 
examination of nerve-cells, can detect any distinct physical 
signs of superinduced spiritual habits. From the physi- 
ological side, it is true, it may be noted in general that 
changes in blood-pressure and nutritive conditions ac- 
company high or low pressure moments of psychical 
experience. Effects of bodily habits may also be ap- 
parent to a limited extent in structural changes. But 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 287 

the call of the commanding duty, the presence of the 
spiritual vision, the birth of the new will, the possession 
of consciousness by the firm purpose which henceforth 
neither Hfe nor death can destroy — all this dominance 
of the psychical leaves no structural mark of itself pos- 
sible of detection on the matter of life in the body. No 
visible register remains stamped on the cerebral areas 
of the conversion of a soul, or of duty done through a 
lifetime, or acts of heroism achieved. Physiology can- 
•not hope to distinguish between the brain of a coward 
and that of the brave man who died — the one in ignoble 
fear, the other in splendid sacrifice in the same trench. 
But in the more f amiUar as well as in the exceptional in- 
stances of man's spiritual ascendancy evidence is given 
from the psychological side of a natural power of mind 
to make matter subject to itself — a power the exponent 
of which must be to us a symbol of unknown dimensions. 
Mr. James once called the attention of professional 
psychologists to some of these dominant characters in 
an article on "The Energies of Men."^ He commends to 
further critical study many instances which show that 
men ordinarily live below the limits of their psychical 
powers; that they rise above the average Hne to higher 
exercises of psychical energy, and exhibit surprising con- 
trol of the nerve mechanism and habits, and that so- 
called mind-cures and some extraordinary instances of 
mental control and use of the psychical mechanisms 
may indicate a greater possible extension of the func- 
tional energies of men than we have as yet taken ac- 
count of in our current psychologies. It is true that the 
highly organized system of the brain- cells and their con- 
nections may be structurally compared to a telephone 
exchange, in which there are so many wires, switches, 
common circuits, and also private connections. But 
there is functionally this striking difference: in the tele- 

^ Philosophical Review, 1907, p. i. 



288 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

phone system a call at one end is received identically 
the same as it was sounded at the other end in the trans- 
mitter; while, as has been said, in the connection be- 
tween a sensory terminus and a mental perception it is 
as though a telegram went in at one end in German and 
came out at the other in Chinese. This whole psycho- 
physical network is not even as a single chain of cause 
and ejffect, but a living network of interactions and inter- 
communications; it is held as a tissue of gossamer in 
the breath of the spirit. 

Moreover, a searching examination of the phenomena 
of the psychical in the use of the physical discloses sev- 
eral particular characteristic features which have some 
significance in relation to the natural possibility of per- 
sonal immortality. 

I. One is the frequent inhibition of the habitual neural 
processes by a masterful psychical energy. A partial 
hold-up of a sensation under the predominance of an idea 
or mental excitation or determination is a quite ordinary 
experience. A sense of duty that has been built up into 
a firm habit of mind will act as an inhibition of certain 
nerve-reactions. It is as a dam strong enough to hold 
back a sudden uprising of fear which otherwise might 
sweep everything before it; in moral courage fear does 
not rise to the level of consciousness. In daily life the 
moral energy, becoming a psychical habit of action, will 
keep down manifold organic sensations and temptations 
of the flesh submerged in the unconscious. This power 
of the idea, this immeasurable force of the personal will, 
summing up in itself potencies, vitalities, intensities 
from the past; and the hope of the future, renders the en- 
tire character a reserve of moral energy; this is a man's 
supernal power to lay down his life and to take it up 
again. It is a prophetic sign that over him death can 
have no dominion, nor can such personal being see cor- 
ruption. So by this sign of psychical power disciples 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 289 

of old, who had seen Jesus, understood at last his ab- 
solute assurance of victory over death. 

2. Moreover, a certain psychical power to regain im- 
paired physical functions is indicated in various instances. 
This is not to be identified entirely with the physical 
capacity of restoring lost organs that characterizes some 
lower organisms, or with the restorative power of nature 
by which tissues are renewed and wounds healed; for 
some cases seem to indicate a more direct influence going 

• forth from mind as a self-healing virtue, letting loose or 
directing to the needed work natural healing energies of 
the body. Much indeed in this field requires further 
investigation and discrimination before the range and 
effectiveness of psychical influence upon the neural system 
can be dehmited, but that there is some stimulating, re- 
juvenating influence of mind over the bodily functions 
which may have further effect on the organic conditions 
seems to be indicated in common experiences. 

3. Another confirmatory fact, which deserves more 
attention than it has received, is the psychical action 
evinced at the "growing point of mind.'* 

Two states of nervous organization are distinguish- 
able; one is that of the formed tissues, which have their 
functions structurally determined and which are ca- 
pable of little modification. The other is that of the 
plastic nerve-tissue, which is still capable of progressive 
organization, and which in the acquisition of experi- 
ence and through conscious effort may become deter- 
minate in worn channels or habitual patterns. It is with 
this more plastic nerve-capacity that the mental train- 
ing of the child has to do. In a real sense the child, while 
learning by effort of attention and conation, organizes 
its own forming brain. Along the advancing line of 
mental growth, at the growing point of mind, the psy- 
chical and the physical interact, and the mental becomes 
the leading factor; the psychical gives direction and its 



290 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

activity stimulates the formation of the neural habits. 
Conscious effort accompanies and conducts, although un- 
conscious of its effect, the organization of nervous proc- 
esses into fixed systems. "Wherever a new path has to 
be forced through the untrodden jungle of nerve-cells, 
there and there only is conscious effort, true mental 
activity, involved. Without conation there is no mental 
growth, and the stronger the psychical impulse, the de- 
sire and effort of will, the more effectually are the dif- 
ficulties of new acquisition overcome; and an effect of 
all such processes, an effect whose degree is proportional 
to the intensity of the conation and the corresponding 
concentration of attention involved, is the organization 
of the nervous elements, the combination of them in 
fixed functional systems. . . . The relations are such 
as to imply that clear consciousness and conation play 
some real part in bringing about the organization of 
nervous elements, that the relations between conation 
or conscious mental activity and nervous organization 
are the causal relations."* We have, thus, this fact to start 
from: there is some formative power of mind over plastic 
matter which, after a prolonged evolution, has been 
fitted and is waiting in a child's brain to be organized 
and used by the growing child. This gives a firm point 
of departure for the speculative hypothesis that the 
psychical factor may have power to initiate a similar 
process in another environment prepared and adapted 
to its future development. This hypothesis only carries 
further out into the unexperienced Hfe this active prin- 
ciple of life as already experienced. Nor does this specu- 
lative extension of present knowledge of the formative 
effects of spiritual conation contravene the law of con- 
servation of energy within the physical world; it carries 
it on further as a principle of conservation beyond the 
known physical system. This venture of faith is not to 

1 McDougall, Body and Mind, p. 277. 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 291 

be held up at the limits of present knowledge of psychical 
power. 

Such possibilities of more subtle action and interaction 
between mind and matter, and of a far wider reach of 
psychical activity, are increased and even brought nearer 
future verification as science cautiously explores the 
unknown border-land of occult phenomena and finds 
indications of more ways and modes of communication 
between persons, both near and far, than we have hither- 
to been disposed to recognize. In this region little as 
yet has been definitely discovered; but all such phenomena 
can hardly be regarded as entirely imaginary. We need 
not for our purpose dwell upon the questions concerning 
the extent of psychic power which arise from telepathy, 
hypnotism, or from alleged post-hypnotic effects in modi- 
fying psycho-physical conditions; for, without entering 
into doubtful investigations, common facts of normal 
experience and thorough analysis of known psycho- 
physical activities furnish plausible warrant for the be- 
lief in a far greater power and reach of mind than we 
can measure. We go beyond demonstrable facts of experi- 
ence, but in the same direction as these facts point, when 
we assume that the psychical may be capable of conserv- 
ing from the dissolution of the body a potency that might 
be conceived as the germ-plasm of a new development 
and a further experience of living. This mortal body 
may prove to have been but the preparation for a better 
form of embodiment hereafter. There is an infinite sug- 
gestiveness in our immediate personal relations with 
nature through these bodily senses, and this suggestive- 
ness of things to come grows not less but more significant 
the more deeply science is enabled to search into the 
relations of things natural and spiritual. The simplest 
yet profoundest truth of evolution waiting to be revealed 
may be this: "There is a natural body and there is a spiri- 
tual body. First that which is natural, and afterward that 



292 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

which is spiritual." And the natural body may be the 
seed of the spiritual embodiment. 

In view of such facts and conditions of self-sustaining 
and self-identifying Ufe as have been adduced, there 
are two slightly variant forms in which the continuance 
of personal life may be conceived as a reasonable hope, 
(i) Both elements, the psychical and the physical, may 
be supposed to continue as a double potentiality of being: 
the physical, in some essential elements at least, being 
conserved in some transformation of its energy continuous 
with the psychical survival; and the latter, the spiritual 
factor, continuing to be as the dominant power of unifying 
life and growth in all the personal capacities and activities 
which in these earthly conditions had begun to develop. 
(2) We may conceive that the psychical entity, surviving 
the final failure of the nerve-system to act as its means 
of communication with the outward world, has in itself 
reserved power of adapting elements of nature to its self- 
maintenance in relation to the external universe, and 
that in ways beyond our apprehension the psychical 
energy, the permanent will to live, from conditions en- 
vironing it after death or in the very act of dying, may 
form for itself another, more spirituahzed embodiment — 
one which shall correspond to its psychical dispositions 
and be better adapted to its future existence than we now 
find in this perishable body of flesh. In this last con- 
ception, if it may be expressed in a single phrase, the 
spirit that is in man is the bearer in all its heredity and 
potentialities of the personal life hereafter. Death will 
thus be deemed a new birth, and the spiritual body that 
shall be conceived as a new attainment, or a more or 
less gradual process of embodiment. The first concep- 
tion is the more generally accepted idea. Not only has 
it obtained in the crude animism of primitive super- 
stitions, but also notions of the world of spirits are still 
prevalent in which some shade or ghostlike appearance 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 293 

of the body is imagined to survive and to manifest a 
certain attenuated existence. In some earKer Christian 
conceptions of the resurrection, the material elements 
of the body were assumed to be gathered by the divine 
power and reconstructed in the semblance of their earthly 
form. More in accordance with the analogy of the seed, 
the body which shall be has been conceived as a spir- 
itual form arising in newness of Hfe from the body that 
returns to dust. There is nothing, as we have main- 
tained, in our limited experience of spiritual potencies 
and of the ultimate structure of matter to forbid this 
reasoning from analogy, or to warrant us in putting the 
non possumus of our ignorance against any evidence, 
should any credible demonstration ever be given of such 
semi-spiritual appearances or communications through 
material manifestations. For all our scientific presump- 
tions, we could beheve in ghosts, if we ever should see 
one. Those who incline to the opinion that the investi- 
gations of the Society for Psychical Research indicate 
something more than telepathy, may consistently ac- 
cept the theory that disincarnate spirits are capable im- 
perfectly at first of rehabilitating themselves in material 
forms and momentarily appearing, of subjecting at 
least to their use some more subtle means of sensible 
communication with this world; while others who do 
not find convincing evidence of spiritual agency in such 
alleged phenomena are inclined to admit that some power 
of thought may pass from mind to mind along lines of 
force which at present we do not understand, and even 
that such impulses may pass also across great distances 
of space — a mode of action, this, which is named but 
not known when we call it telepathy. 

This theory of personal continuity and its evidence 
in some materializations that may become evident to 
our senses, is not indeed contradicted by any known 
necessities of natural law; but it is burdened with moral 



294 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

as well as metaphysical difficulties. In materializations 
of supposed spirits there seems to be left too much of 
the opposition between the flesh and the spirit. But 
the ultimate spiritual problem of personal being is not 
solved; it would only be postponed by such manifestations 
of dual existence. The alleged spiritual manifestations 
are usually too grossly materialistic, too unintellectual 
and meaningless. Communications through such me- 
diums do not serve to spiritualize matter so much as they 
seem to materialize spirits. 

The second form of statement suggested above re- 
quires less of subsidiary hypothesis in the effort to think 
it out. Moreover, such facts of psycho-physics as those 
already adduced, fall easily into line with this view, and 
some analogies to be drawn from the general evolutional 
conception lend to It speculative distinctness and cred- 
iblHty. It Is quite in accordance with common sense to 
regard the psychical factor as the efficient cause, and 
the neural system of the body as the conditional cause 
of consciousness. It may further be granted, that, un- 
less all interaction between body and mind be denied, 
the psychical factor may not only Impress Its influence 
upon the cerebral organization, but also on the aptitudes 
and habits. In short the whole complex of experience. In 
relation to the external world, which is acquired through 
the physical organism. And in turn the psychical power 
may receive In itself the Impression of the physical, both 
Influences being Interfused in the permanent content 
of selfhood. Thus the psycho-physical dispositions and 
habits, which have been fashioned and enriched through 
the struggles, the joys, the sorrows, the victories of this 
Hfe, may constitute a self-recalling and identifying memory 
in the future life. Further the same conation or will to 
live, strengthened, matured, victorious even In the act 
of dying, may have inherent power to form and organize 
other and fitter means of living, under changed conditions, 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 295 

in communion with the worlds of persons and of things 
hereafter. Our present senses are now not perfect enough 
to know even as we may be known. 

A biological analogy may serve to illustrate, to render 
perhaps somewhat more visuaUzable, this speculative 
idea of personal immortality. Biologists distinguish in 
the genesis of an organism two kinds of cells, the germ- 
cell and the somatic (bodily) cell. The former is the 
bearer of Hfe; the other is laden with the material of 
which the body is to be built. The germ-cell contains 
within its microscopic littleness the hereditary characters; 
it transmits the specific and individual determinants of 
the organism that is to grow and win its Hfe in adaptation 
to its environment. The organism does not, as was for- 
merly supposed, exist in miniature, preformed in the egg; 
but its somatic structure and its development are pre- 
determined in the germ-plasm from which it has its origin. 
Now all material analogies break down at some point 
when we would carry them over into the realm of the 
spiritual; but somewhat similar, it might be said, is the 
relation of the psychical, which has in itself the potency 
of the future Hfe, to the body that shall be hereafter: 
viz., the relation, as it were, of the psychical germ, which 
has in itself the intrinsic potency of development both 
spiritually and somatically into the full perfection of 
the embodied personal life hereafter. In this manner 
both memory and personal identity would be conserved; 
for, if in present experience a sensory stimulus is a clew 
sufficient to set consciousness on the trail of a past suc- 
cession of ideas, and an idea is likewise an impulse suf- 
ficient to set off a complex of sensori-motor impulses, 
it follows that it is not at all inconceivable to think that 
death may not go deep enough into the essential ele- 
ments of our being to break up this vital unity — it may 
come not to destroy but to fulfil the profoundly intimate 
associations of these two, the natural and the spiritual. 



296 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

in personal being — each shall not be made perfect with- 
out the other. 

Putting aside, however, such aids from imperfect 
analogies, a tenable ground is gained on which a reason- 
able hope of immortality may rest, and from which 
imagination, if one pleases, may take wing, when this 
conclusion is attained; — in the reciprocal interaction of 
mind and its embodiment, and in the formation of the 
one in the habit and mould of the other, continuance of 
personal identity may be maintained, both subjectively 
and objectively, unless indeed we are not compelled for 
other reasons to lose all confidence in ourselves as real 
beings living in a real universe. 

Continuing our approach to the question of man's 
destiny from the nature side, there remain for us some 
further facts and tendencies which should receive more 
distinct notice. We have been reasoning thus far chiefly 
concerning the natural possibilities of our personal sur- 
vival under other conditions of existence. The probabilities 
of some future development and perfecting of personal 
life are enhanced when the foregoing considerations are 
subsumed under the law of conservation of values in 
evolution. This requires careful elucidation. The prin- 
ciple of conservation of values is one of great impor- 
tance in the philosophy of evolution, although it has 
hardly been formulated, as it should be, in current dis- 
cussions. The fact needs to be emphasized that, besides 
the conservation of matter or energy, there is conser- 
vation of values to be observed as a fundamental prin- 
ciple of evolution. Evolutionary progress, as we have 
already observed (p. 174), is to be measured on a scale of 
vital values, and both extensively and intensively as 
environment has been increased in value and as the 
sensitive response of life has been better adapted to its 
environment. The maximum value of life, both in ex- 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 297 

tent of available environment and in intelligent pos- 
session of it, accompanied by the feeling of pleasure, 
is attained in the age of man. As measured on the scale 
of vital values, a principle of conservation pervades the 
entire course of evolution. Values which have been 
struggled for, lost here and gained there, when at last 
won are made the means of further increase of value, 
of higher and richer attainment of life. Nature is a 
faithful steward, and does not fail to gather interest on 
her investments; nor does it sacrifice the principal: 
periods of apparent loss or times of apparent waste of 
capital prove eventually to have been preparation for 
larger operations and increased returns. The losses are 
incidental; the gains are permanent. The geological 
ages show increased vital values to nature's account, as 
their books have been opened by science and returns 
compared. This is true not only of the materials for the 
use of Hfe, which have been stored up during successive 
ages in the earth, but also it holds good of the advance 
in the differentiation of organic forms and the fitness of 
successive species to make the most of the environment. 
We may well think, therefore, that this law of conserva- 
tion of vital values is not limited within the confines 
of the present age of man, but that it has some prophetic 
signification for further and higher development of life 
in the world-age to come. We may trust nature not to 
become suddenly a spendthrift of all the wealth laid up 
by the ages past. We may trust the God of nature not 
to break faith at last with human hearts. We may follow 
further the interpretative significance of this principle, 
and estimate the force of it in some of its more important 
appHcations. 

I. We would dwell first upon the vital value of the 
body to the mind. We should estimate fully the great 
worth of embodiment to the spirit in our experience of 
both. 



298 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

The poet-philosopher Herder caught in a fine phrase 
a rich thought when he said: "Embodiment is the end of 
all God's ways." An embodied spirit is the natural end 
of creation. The work of God from the beginning has 
been a work in both kinds, matter and spirit, and it can- 
not be conceived as finished in anything less than this — 
the consummate perfection of both in their perfect fit- 
ness for each other in the unity of the personal life. Not 
spirit alone, not body alone, but mind and body of twain 
made one — spirit in sensible communion with nature — 
the outward world attaining its end in the mind's ap- 
preciation and delight in it — this, and nothing less de- 
sirable and complete than this, is the evident fulfilment 
of the creation. Reflect at what cost these bodies have 
been prepared for us. Innumerable ages have been spent 
in lifting the body to its present high estate, in fashion- 
ing the material elements into this human form and 
comeliness. Consider the priceless value to the inner 
life of this sensitive and perceptive embodiment of spirit. 
All nature without us, the divine thoughts objectified 
and rendered visible in the outward world, the language 
which day uttereth unto day, and the glory which the 
heavens declare, and in our homes the faces of friends — 
all these were the gifts of God to man when spirit was 
given a body, when according to the simple, profound 
symboHsm of the first chapter of Genesis, God finished his 
work, and, behold, it was very good. As we read the nat- 
ural history of the growth and perfecting of our senses, 
how, for example, the ear has been formed and attuned 
to all melodious sounds, or how from mere pigment spot of 
sensitiveness to light the eye has been developed, we may 
rejoice exceedingly because we have come to ourselves not 
only as living spirits, but as spirits having ears that we 
may hear and eyes to see. How unthinkably lonely and 
empty would a soul be without such means of communion 
with the outward world, shut up within itself! Another 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 299 

truth, closely following this, will lead us a step further 
in the natural prophecy of inunortaHty. 

2. Some embodiment must be of permanent worth 
to the spirit. As it is an attainment of inestimable value 
to mind now, so it is not to be destroyed, but to be ful- 
filled in the kingdom of heaven. Embodiment has worth 
for spirit now in two ways — for unity with nature and 
for communion with persons. In both these directions, 
therefore, personal Hfe must be conceived to go on, if it 
is- to be made perfect. In both it must rise to happier 
fulfilment, or faU back into vacuity and perish. If the 
body is experienced to be a gift of real value to our inner 
life, then it is to be esteemed as a gift not to be recalled. 
If, now, some body — it may be as yet a rudimentary and 
imperfect body — has become of service to mind in en- 
larging its communication with the outward world and 
in the mutual recognition of friends, then some bodihness 
will always be servicable to mind; and after this brief 
earth-time the spirit in man may expect to find its capac- 
ity for embodiment remaining undestroyed, and to enter 
into some future embodiment more subtly organized for 
its motion and vision in the hfe beyond. 

3. Such continued relations of the personal being 
through some embodiment with the world of persons 
and things is essential further to its perfect individuahza- 
tion; and this Hkewise is a principle of nature, as we have 
seen (p. 177), which we must assume as reaching on to 
perfection hereafter.^ 

4. Another character of the present body should be 
distinctly noticed to render this hope of personal life 
hereafter complete: viz., its present unfinished char- 
acter. Its adaptation to spiritual uses has been carried 
a great way, but it is not yet made perfect. This has 

* As these aspects of the future life have been more fully discussed in a 
previous volume of the author, Modern Belief in Immortality, I would refer 
to that book without dwelling on them here. 



300 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

been implied in what has just been said. Although the 
human body is the consummate organization of atomic 
matter for the use of mind, nevertheless we are by no 
means come in the flesh to the end of conceivable adapta- 
tions of the physical to the spiritual man. Mind has 
thus far made a good beginning, but it may prove only a 
beginning in its organic control of material forces. Thus 
the original vague sense of touch has developed into the 
fine sense of taste, the discriminating sense of sound, 
and the localized and clear sense of sight. But no sense 
goes as far or reaches so high as thought may imagine 
it to be carried. We might receive with immediate per- 
ception the now ultra- visible rays; we would apprehend 
with more demonstrable directness the all-pervasive 
ether in which all things exist and which is in all things. 
Nor need we enlarge upon the partialness of our pres- 
ent control of the elements which are transiently made 
subject to us in these mortal bodies. These vital ele- 
ments come and go — ours to utilize for a day's work, in 
pain escaping from our mastery, and in the end breaking 
loose from our will to live. But just at this point, where 
our embodiment seems brought to a pause, where mind 
seems to receive a final contradiction from matter and 
life is denied by death, hope finds a further prospect 
opening before it, and faith in immortality may take a 
new departure. For we have this reassuring knowledge 
that this mortal body is by no means the final conceiv- 
able perfection of embodiment; other obedience and 
better-organized service to spirit of material forces may 
with reason be supposed. Both from the comparative 
perfection of the human brain in relation to all previous 
organization of matter for mind and also from its im- 
perfection in relation to a conceivable future, we may 
gain a prophetic insight into the significance of the pres- 
ent for the future embodiment of spirit. If, indeed, we 
were forced to assume that in known physics and chem- 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 301 

istry the end of all matter in its possible fitness for mind 
had been reached, then a halt might be called to our 
faith; but we have not come to the end of the science 
of material energies. We have of late been beholding 
new revelations of radiant energies. What latent ener- 
gies are yet to be revealed out of the depths and silences 
of space, who can tell? We who are just beginning to 
learn how much farther the Creator has gone with radiant 
matter than we had dreamed cannot presume to say 
that he can go no further either with it or us. 

5. A significant side-Hght is thrown over this inquiry 
from the knowledge of the service which death has ren- 
dered in the natural evolution of Hfe.^ 

In some unicellular organisms {Paramecium) several 
years ago it was found that several hundred generations 
of cells which multiply by division could be produced 
without the occurrence of any dead cell. Death, that is, 
was found to be not at first a natural necessity. Since 
then recent experiments have continued this succession 
of unbroken cell life up into the fifth thousand, and at 
last advices the succession was still being continued; 
it apparently may do so indefinitely provided the nutri- 
ment is kept suitable for its maintenance. It is thus 
demonstrated that there is in elemental hfe a natural 
immortality, or capacity of indefinite continuance under 
favorable conditions, unless prevented by some external 
accident. More than this, it is known that death occurs 
seemingly naturally as life reaches toward a more dif- 
ferentiated state; death seems to be a condition required 
for the more complex organization and variation of the 
matter of life. Death comes in for the sake of life more 
abundant. The natural law of death may be subsumed 

^ I have discussed at length this aspect of the subject in a book entitled 
The Place of Death in Evolution; as the natural uses of death for life should 
not be passed by entirely, I state in substance the leading idea which was 
developed in that volume. 



302 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

under the law of natural selection. "We may sum up 
in one general statement the facts, and the direct sug- 
gestions of the facts, which recent biological research 
brings within the reach of our reasoning. We find that 
death has many uses in the economy of nature; that it 
is indeed so useful that life itself has called forth death 
to help it forward on its endless way. We discover that 
natural death is only in appearance an enemy; that in 
reality it is a servant and helpmeet of life. One might 
go so far as to assert the seeming paradox that, if it had 
not been for the early entrance of death, life itself might 
not have risen to its full potency, and in its best and 
fairer forms it could not have continued to exist. In 
consequence of death, Hfe develops, and the ministry of 
death is throughout a service for Hfe — for the increasing 
fulfilment of Hfe's promise, and for the greatest possible 
variety, richness, beauty, and universal joyousness of 
life. The one regnant, radiant fact of nature is life, and 
death enters and follows as a servant for Hfe's sake.^ 
When this natural function and service of death shall 
have been accomplished, shaU death itself, as no longer 
useful, cease to be? It is in accordance with the habit 
of nature to discard whatever becomes useless as a means 
of advancing Hfe; useless organisms in time become 
atrophied. It is in harmony with this law of nature to 
hope also for the final discharge of death. When shaU 
death cease to reign? The answer thus suggested from 
what is known of the place of death in evolution is : When 
Hfe can better go on without it, but not till then. Its 
work for Hfe accompHshed, it shall have no more domin- 
ion over us; we may look for the final discharge of deatK.'^ 

1 Smyth, Place of Death in Evolution, p. 43. 
^Op.cit.,ch.2j£>.lV. 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 303 

II 

We have gained thus far broad ground in nature for 
behef in man's survival- value and the possible continuance 
of his Hfe in all its essential energies hereafter. In previous 
chapters we have also observed that in Christ personaHty 
was manifested in its highest power; in him the natural 
was spiritualized, the human made partaker of the 
divine; and this in a measure so full and in revelation 
of Hfe so luminous that its influence abides to this day 
as the light of the world. As we are thinking of the 
future Hfe the further inquiry opens before us, how far 
his personal Hfe illumines the way of thought we have 
been pursuing, and whether the hope of everlasting Hfe, 
which his disciples received from their assurance of his 
power to overcome death, shall prove the fulfilment of 
the values which render a man's Hfe worth Hving forever. 
In other words, does the Christian hope of immortaHty 
run as a break across the course of nature, or does it 
carry straight on and toward some consummate issue the 
way of Hfe already known and rightly loved by us? 

To meet fuUy this inquiry two questions arising from 
the natural order which we have pursued must be put 
to the Christian faith in the resurrection-Hfe. First, it 
is to be asked whether in the historical data (which 
criticism may accept as trustworthy) there are indica- 
tions of Jesus' possession of a superhuman, or at least 
unique, degree of spiritual power to control physical 
forces. If signs appear of unusual spiritual force in him 
to put nature into subjection to himself, these signs would 
confirm the evidence in ordinary experience of the domi- 
nance of the spiritual factor, and would render stiU more 
probable the reach and effectiveness of such power be- 
yond our present knowledge of its possibiHties. Faith 
in our own personal power to overcome death would be 
confirmed in proportion to the assurance that the Christ 



304 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

had power to lay down his life and to take it again. For 
the purpose of determining this we need not shut our 
reasoning up in the dilemma either of beHeving in the 
maximum claim of miraculous force, which may appear 
to be accepted in the extant narrative of Jesus' mighty 
works, or else of disbeheving that anything of the kind 
actually occurred. For a minimum of superior power 
over natural processes, if possessed and exercised — any 
degree of it sufficiently distinct to be apprehended as 
such — would be enough to serve as collateral security 
for the validity of our ordinary experience of the in- 
dwelling energy of the Spirit and its effectual working 
outward among the forces of nature. So far as concerns 
this point, one may be quite willing to accept the severe 
test of faith which Lessing stated in his famous principle 
of rational scepticism: "Accidental truths of history 
can never be the proof of necessary truths of reason." ^ 
For in this connection rationalism has no necessary 
truths of reason to interpose as barriers against credible 
experience of spiritual power in the natural world. On 
the contrary, necessary truths of reason require us to 
trust human experience up to its farthest ascertainable 
limits, and within the scope of experience to assert that 
nothing is impossible which is not self-contradictory. 
Some mental dominance and directing control by the 
personal will, as we have seen, is known fact of psycho- 
physical activities. We have to do with the extent and 
limits of it in our practical psychology. This is not an 
inference to be gained from a necessary truth of reason, 
but a knowledge to be obtained empirically through 
experience. The initial question, therefore, concerning 
the miracles of Christ of direct significance at this stage 
of our inquiry is not whether he did Just what he is said 
in the Gospel narratives to have done, or all that it is 
narrated he did; but whether he did something which 

^ In his Proof of the Spirit of Power. 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 305 

his disciples saw to be beyond their known spiritual 
powers, and which, as witnessed by them, is enough in 
evidence to raise our trust in the efl&cacy of the Spirit 
to any degree above the common experience of its work- 
ing. Claimed as evidences at the maximum of the nar- 
ratives, some miracles of the New Testament for many 
minds render belief difficult in the credibiUty of the ac- 
counts; other works of Jesus, which are regarded as 
rising, though in a less degree, above the line of general 
experience, seem not incredible, and they confirm our 
spiritual experience while they transcend it. They do 
so because they evince more of the same kind of power, 
and extend its influence further along the same line as 
our experience of the effectual working of the Spirit. 
That a certain degree of such superior spiritual dominance 
was possessed and manifested by Jesus may be said to 
be the generally accepted testimony of modern historical 
criticism. It is seen to be impossible to reduce the Jesus 
of the Gospels to the dimensions of a common man. 
And the Christ in history is a supernal power. Some 
virtue went forth from him that the woman felt, and 
that caused his disciples to wonder, and to believe in 
him. Some power he had over demoniac dispositions 
that led the people to bring their worst incurables to 
him. Some calm, personal superiority he manifested in 
the midst of the stormy sea, such as brawny and brave 
Galilean fishermen, seasoned as they were to the winds 
and waves, had never seen in all their buffetings with 
the storms that swept across the lake of Galilee. On the 
face of these Gospel narratives lies the impression of 
Jesus' unique personal power. It was that commanding 
personal power which bound his immediate disciples to 
him in a following that even his death could not de- 
stroy. The mighty works, which are related with such 
clear simpUcity, so naturally that while we read we can 
hardly help beUeving them, when taken even at their 



3o6 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

minimum historical valuation bear witness to the im- 
mense impression which the brief lifework of Jesus made 
upon men who were eye-witnesses of his miracles — an 
impression which time has not been able to efface. If 
taken at their full spiritual significance, as evidences of 
the unique spiritual personality of Jesus, they attest 
and confirm faith in the power and possibilities of the 
spirit in man, which was given beyond our measure in 
him; for, more than the signs which he wrought, above 
the miracles, it was Jesus himself, in the glory of his 
person, who made apostles of disciples; Jesus himself, 
in his abiding influence and the demonstration of the 
power of the Spirit of God in the Christ among us men 
to-day, is for us the evidence of things unseen, the sub- 
stance of things hoped for. However we may seek to 
explain in accordance with our light his mighty works, 
the fact is indisputable, and it is supreme, that the Gospels 
have set in permanent lines, clear, real, ineffaceable, the 
person of Jesus himself. His glory, glory as of the Father, 
abides in all our ideals. History can never lose the revela- 
tion of that Life, the image of that Divineness, the power 
of God in the transfigured Man. 

For us, then, pursuing as we have been this way of in- 
terpretation of the long course of nature up to the ad- 
vent of man, and the significance of his life, the culminat- 
ing evidence of the immortal worth of personal being, 
beyond all other signs that have led us on, is the person 
of the Christ; even as he has left for all men his inner 
assurance of the eternal Hfe: "I know whence I came, 
and whither I go." 

Man's consciousness of immortal being, which was 
realized to the full in Jesus' self-consciousness as the Son 
of God, has been the inner assurance of countless minds 
in hours of deepest insight or moments of highest en- 
deavor. This consciousness of living after the power of 
an endless life is a fact of Christian experience — a lumi- 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 307 

nous fact as positive in human experience as is a star in 
the sky. It is an ultimate result of Christlike Hving, 
indestructible, repeated, confirmed, verified in the fellow- 
ship of an innumerable company of witnesses. What- 
ever else, then, may be but partially known of the his- 
torical Christ, this is certain: He created his disciples' 
faith in the resurrection-Hfe. From him has come the 
world's Easter hope. Something in their personal knowl- 
edge of him had power to change for them his death into 
fuU assurance of his continued life. And that faith which 
Jesus created in them has been a spiritual energy, over- 
coming the fear of death, and transforming memory of 
sorrow into hope of joy in human hearts through all 
the generations since. Such power to radiate into a 
world of death the gospel of immortal love is one of the 
great forces known to man; there is nothing in the 
physical universe to be compared with it unless it be 
the ethereal energy in which we see hght. If we search 
with critical eyes to discover how the person of Christ 
created in his disciples this mighty faith — the greatest 
of his mighty works — we shall have to look farther and 
deeper than to their testimony concerning the empty 
tomb. How could they themselves beHeve in that? It 
was contrary to all their experience of death. Peter, in 
that first preaching of the gospel of the resurrection, 
has given the answer. It was not contrary to their experi- 
ence of Him, that he should be raised from the dead. 
Peter affirms that they were witnesses that God raised 
him up; and they themselves could believe what they 
were witnesses of, because in their knowledge of him it 
was not possible to beUeve that he should be holden of 
death. Through their knowledge of the power of God 
in his life, his continuance in death had become to them 
inconceivable. In our sense of utter loss we may ask of 
those who have left us: Is their Hfe still one with ours? 
His disciples, thinking of his Hfe, remembering him 



3o8 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

from the hour when he first had called them and they 
left all and followed him, and what he had shown him- 
self to be even to the end, said to one another: "It was 
not possible that he should be holden of death." This 
great reversal of belief, this denial of death and affirma- 
tion of Hfe — his continuance in death inconceivable, his 
continued life only conceivable for him — this is the 
very substance and energy of the disciples' faith in the 
living Christ. 

The two constitutive elements of the first disciples' 
resurrection-faith — some reappearances of the Lord, of 
which they declare they were witnesses, and the as- 
surance that he could not really die — appear distinctly 
set forth in the first records of the apostolic preaching. 
Later on, as they live in the hope of the resurrection, 
their spiritual experience of the Christ outshines even 
the sensible evidences of his resurrection of which they 
were eye-witnesses. Especially as this hope is taken up 
in the powerful conviction of St. Paul, the Christian 
faith in the risen Lord has in it the assurance of the 
living presence and power of his spirit. The faith of 
the apostles is their abiding consciousness of God in 
Christ, and the final evidence of it is their vital experi- 
ence of his quickening spirit. They were living their 
lives in the power of his life; more blessed they, though 
they see him no more, because henceforth they walk by 
his spirit, and they know him now as they had not known 
him when he walked with them in Galilee. So to the 
Apostle Paul the resurrection-life became as natural as 
the upspringing of the grain from the seed and after- 
ward the ripening of the full-grown ear. What else, what 
less, should be expected for persons who are made par- 
takers of the divine nature, who are heirs with Christ 
of an incorruptible inheritance, who in their fellowship 
with his life have come to know themselves as the children 
of the light, the children of the resurrection? 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 309 

It is characteristic of the profound realism of the 
apostoHc experience of the eternal life that in Paul's 
great chapter in the Epistle to the Corinthians the resur- 
rection of Christ is represented as an illustration and evi- 
dence of a universal law of resurrection. The fact that 
Christ is risen is not viewed as an isolated and entirely 
supernatural event, but as the first-fruit of the resurrec- 
tion of the dead. It is a revelation of the order of God's 
purpose — first the natural, afterward that which is spir- 
itual. So the apostle subsumes faith in the risen Lord 
under the general law of the resurrection-life: "But if 
there is no resurrection of the dead, neither hath Christ 
been raised." 

Of Jesus' teaching concerning the life after death his 
own saying is true: "My words, they are spirit and they 
are Ufe." These two characters separate his teaching 
concerning the world to come from all the prophets who 
were before him, spiritual simpHcity and personal vitaHty. 
His words of the future life are simple as personal friend- 
ships, and vital as love's assurance of itself. They are 
expressions of his consciousness of living always with 
God; and his promise of the hereafter to his friends is 
given them in personal terms: I will come to you — a httle 
while and ye shall see me — we made perfect in one. 
Herein is no imagery of earth used for heavenly things, 
no symbols of temple, or city, or light of the sun, or splen- 
dors of color as of all manner of precious stones; but 
simply, and with no shadow of our sorrow or question- 
ings of our hearts passing over the clearness of his con- 
sciousness of the Hfe eternal, Jesus gave to the world 
his personal revelation of personal immortality. Hence- 
forth those disciples that knew him best bear witness of 
him and say: "Now are we children of God, and it is 
not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, 
if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him, for we 
shaU see him even as he is. And every one that hath 



3IO THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

this hope set on him, purifieth himself, even as he is 
pure." 

We have thus answered partially the second question, 
which, as was observed, modern psychology puts to faith 
in immortality: viz., What reasonable idea of possible 
future life for us can be conceived? Moreover, we have 
indicated that the assurance of this faith is reached as 
one enters through the door of possibility which natural 
science opens and no knowledge can shut, and, passing 
beyond the probabilities of the historical testimony to the 
appearances of the risen Christ to his disciples, pene- 
trates into their innermost and unquestioning convic- 
tion of the power of God in the supernal person of Christ 
to put all things, death itself included, in subjection 
under his feet. 

We have consequently no need, at this point of the 
long course which our inquiry has traversed, to turn 
aside to consider in detail the historical data on which 
the belief of the early apostolic fellowship and tradition 
rested, that Jesus was risen from the dead. We may 
leave to critical BibHcal scholarship the further search- 
ing of the historical sources of this belief which after 
Jesus' death took so firm and sure possession of the minds 
of the early Christians, and in which they overcame the 
world. The apostles' witness to what they had seen and 
heard has its evidential value primarily as the reason 
for their own belief, a belief that changed the whole 
world in their eyes; it is secondary evidence to us who 
have not seen. The lengthening distance between the 
present time and their age leaves in the shadows of the 
ever-receding past many things that we would know to 
render their declaration of what they had seen faith- 
compelling to our modern unbelief. For the modern 
mind the question has shifted from that of the historical 
credibility of their witness to the risen Lord to that of 
our interpretation of their testimony; how in the light 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 311 

of our present knowledge shall we understand the ap- 
pearances to them of the risen One? It raises a partial 
and misleading issue merely to say of the miracle, "It 
never happened"; the real and larger question is, what 
place and value does the seemingly exceptional event 
have in the total complex of our present experience of 
ourselves and our world? If it fits into that totaHty of 
our thought; if it throws a single beam of Hght into the 
felt mystery around us, and in turn is itself illumined 
and understood in the reflection of all our knowledge; 
in that measure does it gain intelHgibiHty and hence 
possibility in some manner as fact, and to that degree, 
both confirming and itself confirmed, does it become 
part and substance of a rational faith — a faith the full 
assurance of which is not derived from the testimony of 
others merely, nor from sensible appearances only, but 
from its very presence in our consciousness as an im- 
mediate element and factor in the whole organized com- 
plex of our personal experience. 

Ill 

We have thus far been considering the hope of im- 
mortality from the natural side, as Hfe attains its highest 
value in the Son of man. We have not as yet dwelt 
specifically upon the moral values and rehgious ideals 
of the inner personal Hfe. Upon these almost exclusively 
the emphasis has been laid in philosophical and religious 
writings, of which many have been written concerning 
immortahty in recent years. The moral nature, it is 
said, is itself an expUcit expectation of Hfe beyond this 
preparatory stage; its development requires, and its 
end will not be attained unless there shall be for it an- 
other opportunity of hfe. This reasoning can hardly be 
better put than it was in Isaac Taylor's once notable 
book, A Physical Theory of Another Life: "It is among the 
moral sentiments and the intellectual faculties, that is 



312 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

to say, within the circle of the proper consciousness of 
man, that we ought to find, if at all, the indications of a 
second birth, and of a new economy of hfe. Now, all 
that has been said and that may be said — and it is not a 
Kttle, in illustration of the theorem of the immortahty 
of man, as foreshown by his moral sense, by his expecta- 
tion of retribution, by his aspirations after a better 
existence, by the vast compass of his faculties, and by 
his instinctive horror of annihilation — all these prog- 
nostics of futurity, and if there are any other, are ca- 
pable of being condensed in a single proposition, setting 
forth the fact — a fact the mere statement of which con- 
tains virtually a demonstrative proof of the principle 
it involves, namely — That the idea, or the expectation of 
another life is a constant element of human nature or 
an original article in the physiology of man."^ He 
reasons from the analogy of metamorphoses in insect 
life as follows: "If an animal — an insect — the history 
of which at present we know nothing of, is observed, 
at a certain season of the year, to abandon its usual haunts 
... if it is seen to be employed in a manner which 
has no utility whatever in relation to its present mode of 
life — in such a case we infer, without a shadow of doubt, 
that the creature is following a sure leading of nature; 
nor should we deem anything much more unaccountable 
or monstrous, than to find that all this forecasting of futu- 
rity, and all these prudential operations came to nothing, 
and that the deluded insect, instead of awaking in 
gayety from its transition- torpor, had utterly perished, 
and that its dust had been irrevocably scattered by the 
winds. What sound principle of philosophy, then, for- 
bids our looking at the human species as the chief of 
the terrestrial tribes, and then inferring that the sum of 
human instincts, impressions, expectations, and opin- 
ions (taken at large), constituting as they do the elements 

^ Op. cii., p. i68, ed. 1849. 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 313 

of our constitution, the parts of our nature, are to be 
held infallible indications of what awaits the species, 
and as physically prophetic of its destiny? Our present 
argument is reducible to a very few words, or to a syllogism 
that contains its own demonstration. Man, we affirm, 
is to undergo a metamorphosis, and is to pass on to an- 
other stage of existence — because, by the constitution 
of his mind, he expects to do so."^ 

This reasoning, it is to be observed, is not founded 
•upon mere desires or opinions of individual men, but 
upon the constitutional wants, the structural characters, 
the specific preparatory and premonitory habits of the 
human race; the moral argument is "the condensed 
value of human belief." "To impugn, then, the doctrine 
of immortality, or of another stage of existence succeed- 
ing the present, is to find a species, marked in the most 
distinct manner with the indications of a future trans- 
formation, and yet to affirm that no transformation ac- 
tually awaits it."^ 

This passage was written before the time of Darwinism; 
we know now much more definitely the circle of Ufe changes 
which were then observed as metamorphoses in a few con- 
spicuous instances. Does the evolutionary account of 
them break the principle of reasoning involved in this 
pre-Darwinian syllogism? In other words, do we have 
in these transformations of animal life merely an illus- 
tration that may serve to aid our imagination of some 
future transformation of our Hfe; or do they constitute 
a real analogy for a reasonable inference concerning a 
future stage of existence for the human species? We 
follow out a real analogy only when we first discover 
some principle obtaining in one sphere, and then observe 
similar conditions in another sphere amid which an as- 
sumption of the same principle may seem to be a work- 
ing-hypothesis. Much scientific reasoning and experi- 

^Ibid., p. 169. ''Ibid., p. 172. 



314 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

mentation follows this analogical method, as for ex- 
ample, the analogy of wave-motion in successful work- 
ing-theories of light and electricity. Is this reasoning, 
then, from biological transformations, and the predictive 
value of acts, instincts, habits, that have no immediate 
utility, an analogy disclosing a principle or law of life 
that may be transferred and used in the interpretation 
of our personal Hfe; and in a similar manner may we infer 
that our moral conduct, intellectual processes, and spir- 
itual ideals look forward to some other stage of existence ? 
We may hold that the analogy is a true principle by 
means of which we may apprehend better the meaning 
of personal life; we may esteem these similar preparatory 
activities and anticipatory ideals of ours as intimations 
of immortahty; unless, indeed, all these higher instincts 
and constitutional moral dispositions of human nature 
and these spiritual aspirations can be entirely reduced 
to the same level as animal utilities, and their sole occasion 
be found in vital responses to sensible stimuli. But just 
at this point we are confronted with the dilemma that 
these higher habits and activities are of doubtful value 
for the most efficient adaptation of the human species 
to its immediate habitat. They often are directly prej- 
udicial to it. 

How much suffering and sacrifice, what waste of the 
best life, to say nothing of the immense diversion of 
human effort from the practical work of conquering the 
earth, have not the forces and imperious needs of our 
higher life occasioned? These idealistic elements might 
with physical profit have been sifted out through natural 
selection. Some men would cast them behind in the 
ethics of future prosperity for the nations. Our religious 
ideals, so often at war with immediate and material in- 
terests, should have been left by the way in the progress 
of civilization, our useless hopes of immortality forgotten, 
if they have no real meaning and future worth. But they 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 315 

have not been lost. No selective survivals of the gen- 
erations have atrophied man's religious nature and hope. 
Human reason, in spite of all immediate utiHties, will 
still "hold commerce with the skies/' man will continue 
to "hitch his wagon to a star," and human hearts will 
keep on loving in the hope of Hving forever. Scientifically 
these things ought not to be so, unless there is a greater 
reality for us to be manifested — "it doth not yet appear 
what we shall be." 

. There is a noble but minor note as of forced submission 
in the modern doubt whether a future life is to be desired. 
This note runs through these words of a strenuous intel- 
lectual sceptic of our time: "Not only the earth itself 
and all that beautiful face of nature we see, but also the 
living things upon it, and all the consciousness of men, 
and the ideas of society which have grown up upon the 
surface, must come to an end. We who hold that behef 
must just face the fact and make the best of it. . . . 
Our interest Hes with so much of the future as we may 
hope will be appreciably affected by our good actions 
now. Beyond that, as it seems to me, we do not know 
and we ought not to care. Do I seem to say: 'Let us 
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die'? Far from it; on 
the contrary, I say: 'Let us take hands and help, for this 
day we are alive together.'" ^ It is not surprising that 
under the oppression of the behef which science seemed 
to him to render inevitable. Professor CKfford should 
seek to maintain the worth of Hfe by proceeding to deny 
the value of the desire for immortahty. " First, " he writes, 
"let us notice that all the words used to describe this 
immortality that is longed for are negative words; im- 
mortality, in-finite existence. . . . Longing for death- 
lessness means simply shrinking from death" He will 
feel no positive attraction in "the shadowy vistas of 
eternity." . . . "Not only is it right and good thus to 

^ CliflEord, Lectures and Essays, vol. I, pp. 265-6, ed. 1902. 



3i6 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

cover over and dismiss the thought of our own personal 
end, to keep in mind and heart always the good things 
that shall be done, rather than ourselves who shall or 
shall not have the doing of them, but also to our friends 
and loved ones we shall give the most worthy honor and 
tribute if we never say nor remember that they are dead, 
but, contrariwise, that they have lived, that hereby the 
brotherly force and flow of their action and work may be 
carried over the gulf of death and made immortal in the 
true and healthy life which they worthily had and used. 
. . . But for you noble and great ones, who have loved 
and labored yourselves but for the universal folk, in 
your time not for your own time only but for the coming 
generations, for you there shall be life as broad and far- 
reaching as your love, for you hfe-giving action to the 
utmost reach of the great wave whose crest you some- 
time were."^ So the low, sad note of humanity is heard 
through resignation so noble. But is this all of the per- 
sonal longing for immortality? To have been for a brief 
moment at the crest of the great wave — ^is that all of the 
"life-giving action," for which the powers of human na- 
ture have been marshalled: is this all the noble ones at 
the height of their love and labor for the universal folk 
have attained of life and immortality? Not so thought 
the Man whose love was the most far-reaching. 

These words, immortal, infinite, are negative words, as 
Clifford says; but they deny the Hmits of this present 
life that they may bring out the great positiveness of 
that Life which is life indeed, which is not subject to 
the negations of the present world nor destined to end 
in death. Man will work, and think, and dare to love as 
being himself worthy of conscious part and abiding-place 
in the universal life, himself one with those who are to 
be remembered as having lived, and not to be thought 
of as dead; and with those who shall in coming years 

^Ibid., pp. 270, 273-4. 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 317 

live worthily; for our God is not the God of the dead, but 
of the living; and all live unto him. Truer far to the 
life which without thought of death is now "to be counted 
as a good and healthy thing" is Whittier's song of life's 
autumn time, "My Triumph": 

"And present gratitude, 
Insures the future's good, 
And for the things I see 
I trust the things to be. 

"That in the paths untrod. 
And the long days of God, 
My feet shall still be led, 
My heart be comforted. 

"Parcel and part of all, 
I keep the festival. 
Fore-reach the good to be, 
And share the victory. 

"I feel the earth move sunward, 
I join the great march onward. 
And take, by faith, while living. 
My freehold of thanksgiving." 

All is not thus said concerning the meaning of man's 
constitutional desire, his organic thirst for continued 
personal Hfe. It is mistaken psychology to regard it as 
a desire merely, a hopeful thought, a prayer only of the 
human heart. At the core and substance of its persistent 
strength there is another element to be reckoned with: 
it is the will to live. 

Here the positive ideahst has right to enter with his 
afl&rmation that the will to Hve as an individual is one 
of the final unanalyzable elements of human reahty, 
and there is no reahty on earth or in heaven above un- 
less human individuals are real beings ; unless their world 



3i8 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

of purpose is real. In philosophic thought concerning 
the destiny of man we have to do, not finally with the 
brain that a blow may disable, or the muscle of the heart 
that may suddenly fail to pulsate, or the vital breath 
which a microscopic germ may take from us — these are 
the lesser and more superficial aspects of reality. We 
have to do with an ultimate of being and an elemental 
energy, in and by which man hves and has his being. In 
all human experience there is nothing more fundamental, 
more irreducible than the individuaHzing personal will 
to live, and to be an end to itself in a realm of ends. In 
other words, personal individuality is the last meaning 
of man's nature, and the final meaning of us is the real 
meaning of things. This is the steadfast assertion of 
Royce's idealism — the reaHzation of the meanings of our 
individuahties is the whole meaning of the world. "I 
know only that our various meanings, through whatever 
vicissitudes of fortune, consciously come to what we in- 
dividually and God, in whom alone we are individuals, 
shall together regard as the attainment of our unique 
place, and of our true relationships both to other in- 
dividuals and to the all-inclusive Individual, God him- 
self ... I wait until this mortal shall put on — Individual- 
ity." ^ 

Something more is involved in this than the idea that 
the individuaHzing will has a meaning of its own which 
is not to be merged in the meaning of the world as a 
whole. The individuality which "now we seek" is a 
glimpse, a hint, in our best moments a felt beginning of 
"our true and final individuahty," which is to be attained 
by each of our various lives in its own unique place in 
"the oneness of the Absolute Will," in the "harmony of 
the divine life." Such is the supersensible value which the 
idealistic philosophy assays as in the ultimate analysis the 
pure gold and essential worth of human nature. 

^ The Conception of Immortality, p. 89. 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 319 

Moreover, this significance of the will to live should 
also be observed; this will is a fact among other facts, 
an energy among other energies of nature. Personal in- 
dividuahty is a power in relation to other powers of the 
universe. As such it is not to be put aside as so much 
metaphysical hypothesis; it is something to be taken 
into the account in the philosophy of nature. It must 
be estimated at its full worth on the scale of natural 
values. All the transformations of energy, the action 
and reactions of the forces of the universe, are not to be 
fully comprehended if this energy of will which we know 
best of all is ignored. 

These reflections leave us at the very verge of the 
chasm of death in the midst of life — that awful inevitable- 
ness in which all the ways of hfe seem to end. Through 
its fathomless abyss no eye may peer to discern the re- 
ascending path, or catch momentary gleams of heights 
beyond. But not without inner insight, and hope farther- 
reaching than sense can perceive, does the consciousness 
of the deathless will to Hve leave us at the last moment 
before we must pass through the experience of dying. 
Intentionally is it said, the experience of dying; for to 
die is an act, and it is not wholly to be apprehended as 
a state into which we fall. Consciously or unconsciously, 
to die is a spiritual act, even though it should be the last. 
It was said of the Son of man: *'And Jesus cried with a 
loud voice and gave up the ghost." Sometimes we have 
seen others, like their Lord, yielding up their spirits to 
their God. With conscious awareness of what they were 
doing, in clear faith, and with purpose unabated, while 
we have watched, they were taking the first steps over 
the brink of death's inevitableness, passing into the 
darkness of our loss as though themselves catching 
glimpse of the light beyond. Is it true, then, to reahty 
to speak thus of their dying as more than a passive state, 



320 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

as for them a moment of experience, an outgoing energy 
of spirit? Is it in this respect comparable to sleep, as 
we let ourselves fall asleep and again arouse ourselves 
from slumber? Through death as through sleep, does 
the will to live persist? It is possible; but who can say? 
One has said — the One in whom the personal life had 
come to supreme self-knowledge, and whose will of life 
was to do the will of God — he said to his disciples as he 
gave himself up to death: "I lay down my Hfe that I 
may take it again. No one taketh it away from me, but 
I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and 
I have power to take it again. This commandment re- 
ceived I from my Father" (John lo : 17-18). Such is the 
Will of life raised to its highest consciousness of power ac- 
cording to the commandment of God. In the Will of God, 
which is the first and the last order of all the worlds, the 
will of the Son of man has the power and the certainty of 
the eternal Kfe. 

Some approaches of men into the very shadow of 
death have for us suggestive interest as we think of 
what the world may be into which they passed from us. 
For years of high thought and noble ends they have 
had their conversation in the heavenhes. Their purposes 
have reached far beyond the attainments possible in this 
brief lifetime here. AHke by their companionships and 
in their separations, by their successes and in their lonely 
sorrows, they have been gaining larger hearts for life. 
Their capacity of intellect and of love has been enlarged 
through the years of their lifetime on earth; never were 
they more capable of strong, full, abounding life than in 
the hour of their death. It is difficult indeed to beHeve 
that in a moment all this lifelong preparation for some- 
thing beyond should be brought to naught; that the 
momentum of this whole personal energy should suddenly 
be dissipated; that they should be holden of death. It 
seems a thing incredible that nature, having brought 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 321 

man forth in the travail of her forces, and nurtured him 
amid influences selected for his growth and welfare, 
having given him this earth for his schooling, and having 
in reserve the spheres and principaHties of the outlying 
universe for the field of his thoughts and possibilities, 
should all at once mock her own provision and devour 
her own children. These chosen ones, who lived with 
Christ and could die Hke Christ, believed not an end so 
incredible. Down into the very shadow of death they 
went — some esteemed most worthy, dearest to us and 
well beloved among men; and they faltered not, neither 
were they afraid; in mortal weakness they were strong; 
serene was their trust, bright their vision of the light into 
which they seemed to be awakening as this world, left 
to us, was fading from their sight. Never more triumphal 
than in the hour of their mortality was their personal 
power of living and loving on and on. That they have 
lost the way through death into life more abounding — 
this is for us something that we cannot think. The dis- 
ciples could not think it of the Christ whom they had 
seen and known. 

We cannot see what the disciples saw when they were 
witnesses of the ascension of their risen Lord; but there 
are rare instances in which, to those watching, it has 
seemed as though they almost could see this mortal 
putting on immortality. Dimly, in lowliest degree, yet 
in spiritual reality, in the glory of their vanishing from 
our eyes some disciples have seemed as the Master when 
he was received up into heaven. 

It is not needful, however, to refer to such extraordinary 
death-bed scenes, or narratives of exceptional religious 
trust; it is enough to recall instances that often have 
been known, in which manifestation of personal power to 
the last moments, even in the very act of dying, has 
made its own ineffaceable impression on those who wit- 
nessed it. They cannot feel that what they saw was 



322 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

not of the spirit spiritual. Physiology, looking on, may 
account for much, but not for all. Apparent visions 
at such moments may not be what they seem; yet even 
so, they may be symbols of things that no eye can see. 
It is not the vision, but the power of the spirit to have 
such visions, that is the reaHty beneath all our science 
to explain away. Several years since a valuable book 
on Visions was written by an eminent physician, with 
an introduction by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Of the 
"stories of heaven opening over death-beds, etc.," the 
author. Doctor E. H. Clark, says: "They are, however 
much our hopes may wish they were not, the last flickering 
of life's taper; the occasional flashings of cerebral fires, 
burning the brain's accumulated stores of experience. 
Probably all such visions as these are automatic. But 
yet, who, believing in God and personal immortality, as 
the writer rejoices in doing, will dare to say absolutely 
all — will dare to assert there is no possible exception?" 
(p. 272). Of nine such cases which had been observed 
and thought to justify such a notion, he remarks that 
two or three "present phenomena of which, to say the 
least, it is difficult to give an adequate physiological ex- 
planation" (p. 274). From his own long observation of 
death-beds he recalls "only a single instance of which 
the phenomena admitted the possibility of any other in- 
terpretation than a physiological one." In that one 
remarkable instance, he says, "there was no stupor, 
delirium, strangeness, or moribund symptom indicating 
cerebral disturbance. . . . The conviction, forced upon 
my mind, that something departed from the body at 
that instant rupturing the bonds of flesh, was stronger 
than language can express" (p. 277). He further dif- 
ferentiates the exceptional cases by the fact that in pre- 
vious visions "a definite object, like a human face or 
form, was seen"; in these last three cases "no definite ob- 
ject, form, or face was apparently seen. . . . There would 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 323 

be no revival of brain-cells, stamped with earthly memories 
and scenes, but something seen of which the brain had 
received no antecedent impression, and of which the 
Ego had formed no conception" (p. 278). We are thus 
come, step by step, through a long course of observations, 
to the Kmit of our knowledge of the personal Hfe, and 
the outlook from the end and height of human experi- 
ence is — immortality. 

Such is the full and final meaning of the personal life 
as it is known in the Christian consciousness. We be- 
lieve in hfe; we do not beHeve in death. Life is reaHty; 
death is appearance. Life is the Hght that abides; death 
is the shadow that passes over it, and it is gone. The 
life is the light of the world. Henceforth the mystery of 
life and death is not a mystery of darkness, but of light, 
even the Light that lighteth every man coming into the 
world. For the moment death contradicts us; but we 
ourselves are absolute denials of death. Life is the master, 
death but the servant. The meaning of Hfe in its revela- 
tion in Christian experience is 

"The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 

That Life is ever Lord of death, 
. And love can never lose its own." 

The Christian experience, assured of the immortal 
worth of personal being, throws its Hght over the world 
without, and finds the meaning of nature also to be good; 
with Fra Lippo Lippi it declares: 

"This world's no blot for us. 
Nor blank — ^it means intensely, and means good; 
To find its meaning is my meat and drink." 



324 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

IV 

Some suggestions remain to be added concerning the 
conceptual difficulties, which at times cast down faith 
in the future life. To rise above these a right use of 
memory and imagination may be an aid to a reasonable 
hope. Memory and imagination, these two splendid 
gifts of God to men, have not been bestowed for the sake 
of intensifying pain or causing years of sorrow. They 
are gifts meant for happiest uses. It is well, therefore, 
for us to avail ourselves of the rich treasures of memory 
as well as of even momentary gleams of imagination for 
the reassurance and peace of faith and love. In glad 
consciousness of bright days that have passed, and 
serene thoughts of the translation of their memories into 
happier days hereafter, the Christian will possess his life 
in the present more abundantly. Forgetting, as he has 
Christian right to do, the things that are behind, which 
should be forgotten, he treasures up in his own inner 
Hfe those things of immortal worth which cannot be de- 
stroyed. His is the glad assurance that whatever has 
made this life well worth living shall not be lost; that 
God, who was revealed in Christ, has not made his mind 
to deceive it, nor his heart to break it; that death in its 
appointed season shall come to him, and to all that he 
holds dear, not to destroy but to fulfil. His memories 
shall become his hopes; his sorrows shall become his 
songs. Aids to the imagination of things unseen the 
poets render in Hues that catch gleams of everlasting- 
ness. Even merest fancies, such as Httle children see, 
may flit Kke evanescent sunbeams across the shadows of 
some lonely path of sorrow. From the mouths of babes 
and sucklings, human hearts have been taught and 
lightened. Moreover, there is a scientific use of the 
imagination which rightly may be called to the aid of 
reason in the contemplation of the future continuance 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 325 

of life. The use of imagination in the laboratories of 
science has often been justified by its fruits. In its prin- 
ciple and method such use of the power of imagination 
is much the same in the search of reason after the truths 
of the spiritual realm. It is insight anticipating experi- 
ence; it is imagination extending knowledge in the same 
direction as the knowledge already attained. Scientific 
imagination presides over fruitful experiment and pre- 
cedes the advance of scientific verification. In the order 
of spiritual experience, it is true, the verification must 
wait until elsewhere we may see and be sure. But this 
delay of verification does not preclude the helpful use 
of imagination in thinking out the natural lines of pres- 
ent experience toward their possible extension and com- 
pletion in the life hereafter. We may thus rightly and 
profitably entertain any thoughts that may lead us out 
to conceptions of possible enlargement and perfecting 
of our present powers — such as some extension of our 
present perception of nature or future exercise in greater 
freedom of the mental activities which now are our most 
interesting pursuits; whatever, in short, may serve to 
enhance those same values of life which now are of richest 
worth to us personally. This is but to imagine what 
blossoming shall follow the now scarcely opening bud, 
to wonder in what heavenly fruitage such blossoming of 
our own tree of Hfe may ripen. 

"If it be true," said Isaac Taylor in the introductory 
chapter of that once much-read book, The Physical 
Theory of Another Life, "that human nature, in its present 
form, is only the rudiment of a more extended and de- 
sirable mode of existence, we can hardly do otherwise 
than assume that the future being must so He involved 
in our present constitution as to be discernible therein; 
and that a careful examination of this structure, both 
bodily and mental, with a view to the supposed recon- 
struction of the whole, will furnish some means of con- 



326 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

jecturing what that future life will be, at least as to its 
principal elements" (p. 4). While deeming it impossible 
for the mind to conceive of a mode of existence essen- 
tially and totally unlike our actual mode of life — for this 
were to imagine ourselves endowed with a real creative 
faculty — he remarks: "But the task we now undertake, 
although arduous, is altogether of another sort; inasmuch 
as it is proposed to specify the conditions of a mode of 
existence differing from the present as little as may be, 
and yet in a manner that shall secure the highest ad- 
vantages. On a Hne of conjecture like this, sobriety may 
be mistress of our course, nor need we set a single step, 
without a sufficient reason for the direction we take. . . . 
It cannot be thought a hopeless task to trace the rudi- 
ments at least of the future, amid the elements of the 
present life" (pp. 47-48). 

This leads us into a field where large opportunity is 
offered to speculative thought, in which imagination 
may have free play. We often wonder what we might 
know, which is now hidden from our utmost science, if 
our perceptive power were enabled directly to take in 
vibrations and radiances now just beyond our range of 
vision. The present range of sight is Hmited on either 
side the spectrum, and there are ethereal rays amid 
whose influences from all the stars we Uve unconscious 
of their presence. The visible spectrum extends over 
but one twenty-seventh of the known range of ethereal 
vibrations. Sight is rightly esteemed the present per- 
fection of the senses; yet "all objects that vibrate less 
than four hundred bilHon times a second, or more than 
seven hundred and fifty billion times a second, are ab- 
solutely invisible to us." There are supposed also to be 
thousands of octaves beyond the eleven that we can 
roughly hear.^ The units or building stones of this whole 

^This sense limitation is described more elaborately among others by 
Professor J. Y. Simpson, The Spiritual Significance of Nature, pp. 16 seq. 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 327 

visible universe are ultramicroscopic infinitesimals, far 
beneath this Umit of our vision, although lately by an 
ingenious experiment physicists have succeeded in 
isolating radium particles and photographing the pas- 
sage of corpuscles with their electric charge by the trail 
of vapor precipitated by them across a suitably prepared 
field.^ It is easy to conceive that the power of micro- 
scopic sight, or of those senses which the physiologists 
call the "distance-receptors" might be vastly enlarged. 
It is not so easy to visualize the splendors that might be 
revealed, if that should occur. If in the future Hfe we 
should acquire perceptive power beyond some ultra- 
telescopic range, or sense as receptive even as is a photo- 
graphic plate to the unnumbered stars — what a universe 
of glory might become our possession! what freedom of 
the skies might be ours! in what Hght of the infinite 
heavens should we walk ! — there would be no night there. 
Or again, if our sense of hearing were so attuned, as to 
be responsive to these many notes which now no ear may 
hear, to what music of the spheres might we Ksten and 
sing! With such enhancement of perceptive powers amid 
aU these influences that leave no space empty, what 
wondrous environment of lovehness, what fine perfection 
of line and form, what disclosures of order, symmetry, 
and beauty even where now we see naught but imper- 
fection and ugliness, might awaken to ever new dehght 
our joyous love of nature ! There would be for us in very 
truth a new heaven and a new earth, if we might see 
and listen so — if but for a Httle ways there might be 
pushed farther out the Hmits of our perceptive response 
to things around us and above us. 

Another imaginative way of looking forward to our 
future life opens quite simply and naturally when we 
contemplate what enhancement of some of those things 
we value most might be afforded if power of swift and 

^ Experiments in the Cavendish Laboratory, by Wilson and Thomson. 



328 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

unlimited motion through space should be given to us — 
if we could quickly be where our thoughts are. If the 
astronomer might follow his thought to the points in 
the telescopic field that are of most interest to him, to a 
planet whose singular marks cause him much speculation, 
to Orion's nebulous mystery of light, or toward constel- 
lations shining from out the farthest depth of space; if 
thus he could gain direct and sure knowledge of these 
other worlds than ours, at which he can now only look 
up and wonder as a little child at the twinkhng star; 
what joy of discovery, what ceaseless incitement and satis- 
faction would be his ! How in his pursuit of astronomy, 
which is here only begun, the future life would be to him 
worth living! And it might be a more intimate and 
personal delight, if to us were given power to follow at 
will where our thought of others may go, to be present 
where our hearts are. How distances between those 
most near and loved would cause no more the sadness 
of our farewells, the loneliness too often through long 
years of waiting for those whose ways have led them 
apart; and that other and deeper loneliness, which nothing 
can fill, when death divides those whom God hath joined 
together ! It is no vain fancy, no unworthy desire to 
cherish the thought that somehow in that other life, amid 
all the swift celestial radiances, we whose thoughts even 
now are swifter than our measures of time and will know 
no bounds of space, may have added to us hereafter such 
power of being present, following our thought and will, 
that wherever in God's omnipresent love our hearts are, 
there we may be also. 

Much the same might be said of another most noble 
human desire — the hunger and thirst of the spirit for the 
truth. Among the greater passions of humanity is the 
love of truth. It is sign royal of the greatness of man's 
nature. Conceive, then, of the future Hfe as at the same 
time a ceaseless incentive and a constant satisfaction of 



THE FUTURE PERSONAL LIFE 329 

the desire to know, of the soul's quest for truth. It was 
a remark of Lessing, often quoted, that if the Almighty 
should offer to him in the one hand the possession of 
truth and in the other the search after truth, he would 
choose the latter. But the dilemma lies only in the im- 
perfection of our knowledge, and the justification of 
Lessing's choice is that the search for truth would lead 
far and away beyond any possible earthly acquisition of 
truth. But the seeking and the finding may be one. It 
.is not impossible to conceive that we might be possessed 
of some swifter power of intuition, some clearer insight 
and instantaneous comprehension, so that at a glance 
we might know, that to think would be to understand, 
that we should have at once an ever-broadening horizon 
and a sunlit vision. Then the disappointing sense in 
which the search for truth so often ends would no longer 
cast us down. The disharmony between seeking and 
finding, like other discords of this present Hfe, would 
disappear. The Almighty's gift would be one and the 
same gift of truth sought and found; without ceasing 
we shall find as we seek and know as we are known. 

Even so, because personal life for us must always be 
finite, the active powers of our nature shall never lack 
field for exercise or fail of fresh incentive for their enter- 
prise. Man shall have the infinitude of the creative 
thought of God for his habitation, and the years of the 
everlasting for his activities. Without our often weary 
sense of the baffling Hmitations of our sciences, or of the 
confusions of Hght and darkness in our theologies, or of 
the failure of our understanding to answer questions 
which a Httle child will ask; in a pursuit of truth that 
shall be ever its joyous discovery, the spirits of those 
who would know might repeat hereafter the inspired 
words: "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom 
and the knowledge of God ! How unsearchable are his 
judgments, and his ways past finding out!" 



CHAPTER X 

PERSONAL REALISM — CONCLUSION 

We have now reached the end of our search through 
nature for the meaning of personal life. We have fol- 
lowed the trail from sign to sign from the beginnings of 
our knowledge of elemental things to the final and full 
Christian consciousness of life, and its promise of com- 
pletion hereafter. Throughout this inquiry we have 
not sought for proofs of anything, but for the meanings 
of everything. We have carefully endeavored to ascer- 
tain the facts of nature, and to discern their significance. 
Hence we have avoided imposing on our inquiries any 
theory of knowledge, and we have not sought to weigh 
our results on the scales of standard philosophies. Nor 
have we been anxious to square with theological doc- 
trines our interpretations from the nature-side of the 
Christian consciousness of Hfe. This avoidance, how- 
ever, of the temptation to depart from our single and 
straightforward course of thought should not be at- 
tributed to indifference to the interest and value of these 
philosophical and theological pursuits at which we have 
only permitted ourselves to glance as we have passed by. 
A new philosophy, if we are to have one, must proceed 
from such inquiries as have been indicated in the previous 
chapters, and the next theology to be received, if it shall 
be vital and real, will prove itself to be a re-adaptation 
of the behefs of the living church to the increasing revela- 
tion of the thoughts of God through further knowledge 
of nature and richer experience of the spirit in the per- 
sonal Hfe. 

330 



PERSONAL REALISM— CONCLUSION 331 

At the close of our inquiry we may indicate somewhat 
summarily the bearings that its results may have toward 
current philosophies as well as theological interests. A 
central point of philosophical concern is the question 
concerning reaHty. What is real, and how do we know 
it to be reaHty and not appearance? Our personal life 
is all very real to us, but is it only to us that it is real? 

I have looked out from the window of a cottage on a 
clifif overhanging the sea, when at night the fog had 
.shut in, leaving nothing to be seen save only the objects 
within the Kghted room from which I looked out; yet 
as I looked the fog-bank seemed at moments to become 
whiter, as though about to shift; and apparently lights 
were to be seen as from passing vessels or gleaming for 
an instant from the other shore. But these changed as 
I changed my position: it was a vision without reality; 
it was not a lifting of the fog, it was only the reflection 
here and there upon the outlying fog-bank of the lamps 
of my own home. What more than this, we may won- 
der, is our mental outlook? What but the evanescent 
light of our own thoughts reflected back from the vast 
outlying mystery in which for a brief moment we have 
our dwelling? If, indeed, it were only that, something 
of our human trust might be kept — the faith in our 
home-Hfe as of priceless worth and having in itself a 
measureless significance, even if it be but as a bright 
space in the midst of cloudland. For has not the prag- 
matism of our latest philosophy of life this ever-ready 
answer to offer to the scepticism within us: Our faith is 
true because it works? Try it and see how it works; 
prove this home-faith of the soul by its conduct of your 
life. If you are content merely to look out of your win- 
dow and think, if you simply sit down by your fireside 
and philosophize, you cannot expect to know what is 
without — what the fog-bank hides. Doing is knowing. 
Put your light, not behind your window, but in the bow 



332 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

of your boat. Put forth; keep your eye on the compass, 
not minding the fog; follow what you know and can trust, 
and you will find what is real and true; you will not make 
of your life a wreck. Is this enough for us? Is truth 
at best only the greater probability? Does experience 
go further and deeper than this pragmatic advice? Have 
we true knowledge of reality? Do we have real knowl- 
edge of ourselves, or of others, or of anything in the 
world ? 

The answer of common sense is that things in our 
awareness of them correspond to their existence external 
to us, and that our personal world is in reality what we 
take it to be. Our perceptions of things mean their real 
existence. To know that anything really is, we do not 
need to know perfectly what it is. We know it truly 
in its given relation to us; we may only know imperfectly 
or not at all what it may be in its relations to all other 
things. To know in part is not equivalent to not know- 
ing at all. One does not need to take into his eye all 
the sunshine to know that there is light; a single beam 
is enough for that. Nor is it necessary to understand 
what a ray of light may reveal of its colors and lines 
in a spectroscope in order that we may know what the 
light means as it shines for us. Agnosticism darkens 
the truth of things that are seen when it throws doubt 
over things that in part transcend our present knowl- 
edge. So far as they exist now for us they are not un- 
known. Our knowledge may go but a Httle way, but 
so far as it goes it is valid knowledge. The little child 
is not deceived when it first becomes aware that its fingers 
grasp something which is not itself, though it may have 
no idea what it is. We are only stating thus the com- 
mon-sense beHef in the reaHty of self and the world. The 
idea of reality is a simple idea, unanalyzable into any- 
thing simpler than itself; but it is a very persistent idea, 
which all our philosophizing cannot succeed in putting 



PERSONAL REALISM— CONCLUSION 333 

out of our mind. While we try to think of ourselves as 
living in a world of appearance only, we are real to our- 
selves, and the table on which we may write our phi- 
losophy of negation is an actual thing to us. 

Like all other primary ideas, the real may have mean- 
ings for us that admit of description. We may think out 
in various directions what is given in our primary ideas. 
There are certain secondary conceptions that emerge 
directly from our experience of ourselves and the world 
as real. These constitute the meanings of reality for us. 
In other words, while we cannot say what substance, or 
Kant's "thing in itself," is, we do apprehend what it 
means for us in the actuality of our daily life. We know 
what we mean when we say: I am, I act, I am alive in 
the world. Such meanings of reaUty we would recognize 
as fundamental in a philosophic construction of the data 
of human experience. A theory of knowledge fails to 
be true to life if at any point it loses vital contact with 
the real as experienced. The following meanings of 
reaUty — what we must think about it — we find given 
in the act and processes of Kving: 

1. Reality is existence independent of our idea of it. 
The idea of reaHty is itself subjective, a mental object 
presented in consciousness. But the idea is about exis- 
tence that is not made by, nor does it cease with, our 
consciousness of it. The idea is our mental act responding 
to, or going out toward, the object presented through 
the senses. The object is not transferred or transformed 
into our idea; but our conception of it is the mental in- 
terpretation of what is perceived. The idea is not creative 
but recipient of the object thought as existing. This is 
real knowledge of an external world. 

2. Reality is experienced as energy. The self as an 
object of our thought is immediately presented in the 
mind as active being, as an existent power of action. 
Knowledge of ourselves as energizing is given in our im- 



334 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

mediate awareness of our own existence. The self, experi- 
enced as acted upon, brings to us knowledge of energy 
external to ourselves. We understand what the world 
must be from what we know we are. We know ourselves 
as Kving power in the midst of the powers that be. Real- 
ity is thus apprehended as potential being; as such it 
exhibits causation and power of development. Hence, so 
far as modern physics reduces matter to a form of mo- 
tion, it approaches very near our experience of our own 
inner reality of being. 

3. Reality is existence as something to be known. It 
exists for the knowers. It is out there in space for any 
passer-by to see it. It passes by us as a succession in 
time for us to be aware of. In this sense our experience 
of reahty is rightly said to be also a social act. It has 
real meaning to ourselves as we find it to have similar 
meaning to others. In the social experience of external 
reality our personal knowledge is ampHfied, corrected, 
verified. It loses reality for us if we find that it does 
not have similar aspects to others; we say, our eyes must 
have deceived us. I look upon a landscape; my vision 
of it is just its relation at that moment to me. It would 
be only my creation if it should not be there when I 
shut my eye. It might be my illusion if another should 
not be able to see it as I thought I did. It stays there 
for any one who has eyes to see. It is for me when I re- 
turn and look again. The real, that is to say, in the 
outlying world, is a constant of nature, and for all human 
experience; its verification is the result of a social experi- 
ment — the finding nature there by all men. 

4. ReaHty is existence as a whole. There is one reality, 
or there is nothing. We could not know it by fractions 
of it if it were not an integer to be known in part by 
finite intelligencies. The unity of the whole of being is 
given in our immediate experience of the unity of our 
personal being. The first principle of personality is a 



PERSONAL REALISM— CONCLUSION 335 

principle of unification. I must continue to be one and 
the same person through life. And we must live wholly 
to live well. Dissociated personality is abnormal and 
unreal. It strikes us as something uncanny. The man, 
we say, is not himself; and we watch for him to come 
back to himself. Moreover, the daily process of normal 
life is a process of organizing, harmonizing, making our 
own in the continuity of our thought and purpose the 
heterogeneous materials which the world offers to us for 
-our assimilation. Our every-day test of the real is its 
consistency with our entire previous experience. If 
something does not fit into our common experience of 
things we doubt it; we will receive it as true only when 
we can set it in our whole knowledge of men and things. 
Accordingly the real has been described as that which is 
consistent with the total complex of himian experience. 
Hence it is that the dualism between the subjective and 
objective, which is the standing puzzle of metaphysics, 
does not concern the common sense of men. In prac- 
tical living it does not exist as a consciousness of disunity; 
the two, the self and the other than self, coexist and co- 
work in the organic oneness of actual personal living. 
One may at times become keenly conscious of the distance 
between the self that he would be and the self that he 
now is; but such inward strife is recognized as something 
to be overcome, and the felt need and prayer of Hfe is 
that we may be made whole. 

The duaHsm between man and nature is limited and 
not ultimate; it rests on a deeper ground of being common 
to both. The delimitation of self and outward nature is 
necessary to the upspringing and growth of finite personal- 
ity, as the deeper ground of being in the one whole of 
reality is necessary for the existence of each. Hence it is 
that the personal Hfe comes more harmoniously and fully 
to itself as it goes out into nature and makes nature its 
own. It is not materially only that we may possess the 



336 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

world; animal life may do that after its measure. Our 
appropriation of nature is also an appreciation of it. We 
may possess it intellectually, rationally, aesthetically, 
spiritually. It becomes more truly ours through poetry, 
art, and music. Its beauty becomes our delight, its scenes 
our parables; we catch its spirit on our imaginations; 
we set its music to our songs. In the pure love of nature 
for its own sake there is always a more or less conscious 
feeling of the deeper unity both of the mind that per- 
ceives and the nature that is there to be seen — a sense of 
one and the same Spirit in all and over all. 

There are indications in recent literature of a revival of in- 
terest in the question which was much discussed in the earlier 
part of the nineteenth century concerning the value of the 
aesthetic sense. Through the appreciation of the beautiful in 
nature and art are we brought into touch with supersensible 
reality? This question was raised, but not answered, in Kant's 
Critique of the Msthetic Judgment. A compendious account of 
the philosophic views of the beautiful is given by Merz in 
the fourth volume of his History of European Thought in the 
Nineteenth Century. It would require a volume to discuss 
thoroughly the cognitive value of our apperception of the 
beautiful; the following brief statement of the chief problems 
involved must here suffice. Darwinian science seemed at first 
to dismiss summarily the whole philosophy of the beautiful by 
reducing the function of what we perceive to be beauty in the 
organic world to a purely utilitarian basis as a means of survival 
for natural selection to use. But in this field, as in others, the 
question returns: Is that all of it? At three points this inter- 
rogation of nature, including ourselves, remains to be answered 
if we are to have a complete philosophy of beauty: First, grant- 
ing the utilitarian origin of the beautiful just as far as natural 
history may show that it goes, there appears to be a vast over- 
plus of beauty in nature, which has no appreciable relation to 
natural selection. (For some discussion of this point I would 
refer to my chapter on the "Significance of the Beautiful," in 
Through Science to Faith.) The second part of the problem of 



PERSONAL REALISM— CONCLUSION 337 

the beautiful is physiological. Admitting whatever physi- 
ological psychology may render probable as to the sensory origin 
and character of our pleasure in the beautiful, does that render 
a complete account of our appreciation of the beautiful ? What 
besides is given in our conscious experience of the world of 
beauty? In reference to poetry and art there is something for 
post-Darwinian philosophy to reconsider in Schiller's idea of 
"aesthetic freedom" and Goethe's "implied but unwritten" phi- 
losophy of nature. This valuation of the beautiful reached its 
full assurance in Schelling's philosophy, as Merz concisely ex- 
presses it: "Any conception pertaining to the whole of nature 
and life would have to deal with the beautiful not merely as a 
subjective or accidental phenomenon but as something that 
touches or reveals the innermost core of reahty " {pp. cit., vol. IV, 
p. 46). Lotze's estimate of this philosophic tendency is well 
worth quoting: "It was of high value to look upon beauty, not 
as a stranger in the world, not as a casual aspect afforded by 
some phenomena imder accidental conditions, but as the for- 
timate revelation of that principle which permeates all reahty 
with its Hving activity; it was of value that this ideahsm put 
an end to merely psychological theories which reduced the 
beautiful to a convenient coincidence of external impressions 
with our subjective habits of thought; and, on the contrary, 
sought in every object of beauty its objective meaning in the 
connection of a comprehensive world-plan; . . . and, lastly, 
it was of value to look upon art Hkewise not as an accidental 
play of human powers which might also be wanting, but as a 
necessary stage in that series of developments which form the 
essential nature and hfe of the Eternal and truly Real." (Cited 
by Merz, ibid., p. 25; Lotze, Geschichte der ^Esthetic in Deutsch- 
land, pp. 125 seq.) 

Among recent writers Professor J. M. Baldwin has revived, and 
carried to an extreme, " the aesthetic theory of reahty." After 
the manner of the moderns to impose new names of their own 
compounding upon reborn views, he calls his theory Pancalism. 
See his Genetic Theory of Reality. He says: " We realize the 
real in achieving and enjoying the beautiful " (p. 277). " If 
the world is artistic, beautiful, it cannot be incoherent, disorgan- 
ized, radically pluralistic " (p. 308). 



338 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

Moreover, the recognition of other beings like ourselves 
is an implicit recognition also of the oneness of being as 
a whole. No one really doubts the existence of other 
persons, yet nothing in our experience is harder to prove 
than this. It is an impossible task to construct a logical 
demonstration of the reality which we know most in- 
timately of what another's life is to us. For we have no 
immediate consciousness of the soul of another; we 
may not transfer bodily what may be going on in an- 
other's mind into our own personal consciousness. We 
cannot literally put ourselves into another's place, and 
see how what we see looks to him. Yet we may be sure 
of our knowledge of another's inner life as we are sure of 
our own. Such is the paradox of experience — the least 
known becomes the best known. Philosophers have 
offered different reasons for our assurance of the existence 
of other beings like ourselves. None are adequate as 
proof of it; all run back into a first postulate of our own 
personal experience ; we know others as we know ourselves 
in the reaHty of being as one whole. We and they breathe 
the same air because we spring from the same root; the 
personal life in us and in them has its reality in the com- 
mon ground, in the one reality of being. It is in and 
through the Spirit in all and through all that our spirits 
find one another. We are persons /or one another; our 
personal Hfe is from its birth and essentially a social 
fife, because there is One in whose light we all see light — 
One who is Love before we love. "We love," said St. 
John, "because he first loved us."^ 

5. Reality is existence as having worth. Something 
is, and it is for something. Reality as a whole has value ; 
it is good that it is. All beings have some value in their 
relations to all others. The relative value of each is 

*This intimate and most real communion of personal lives of which as 
children of God we are made capable has been finely expressed by Mr. 
Hocking. Op. cit., p. 265. 



PERSONAL REALISM— CONCLUSION 339 

given in the supreme good of the whole. This character 
of worth, like the other qualities of existence, is assured 
in our partial individual experience of the worth of being. 
Persons Hve for some end, and they are something to 
one another. They are, as Kant would insist, ends in 
themselves. As such, our social philosophy will add, 
they may also be means to one another. But their value 
as mutual means of life cannot rise above its fountain 
in their worth as ends in themselves, and that in turn 
is their participation in the worth of being in general — 
in the goodness of the One Source and Unity of all beings. 
When we thus attribute value to existence it is true that 
we simply make a generahzation from our individual 
personal experience of what Hfe is to us; we attribute 
that which is an ultimate quality of the real in our ex- 
perience to reality as a whole. But the generalization is 
valid as it is an extension to the circumference of our 
knowledge, of the real as it is known at the centre and 
core of our personal being. We cannot do otherwise 
than affirm this predicate universally. No scientific law 
can be strictly demonstrable when carried beyond ex- 
perimental verification, but it may be shown to be so 
conformable to all known facts as to leave no room for 
doubting its universal validity. Similarly, this belief 
in the ultimate and supreme worth or good of being as 
a whole is something more than an inference in a process 
of reasoning; it is the only way in which, from the nature 
of our knowledge in part of our own being and its ends, 
reality as a whole can be consistently conceived. It is 
not merely to say that nature will not deny itself; it is 
to say that the personal Hfe in nature cannot deny itself. 
If we are of worth the universe has value. The good given 
anywhere means the good for everywhere. What is of 
personal value has its existence in a realm of values. In 
relation to it all things take on values. The good already 
realized is prophetic of the greater good which is to be. 



340 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

The light in the eye of one is evidence of the light for 
others; the love in the heart of one is assurance of love 
at the heart of all reaUty. 

The world-view, to which we have been led at the 
close of our inquiry, may be characterized as that of 
personal realism. We are real to ourselves, and nature 
is real to us. Our knowledge of the supreme Being is 
not a conceptual enlargement of oneself; it is the finite 
self knowing itself in relation to the true, essential uni- 
versal Being. Only in such relation to the One can we 
realize fully our personal Hves. The personal reaUsm, 
which has thus been indicated, should not be regarded 
by any means as a denial of idealism; but it is refusal 
to be satisfied with those forms of idealism which leave 
the idea of the Absolute vacant of all human reaUty. 
The true God in rehgious experience is not an abstrac- 
tion of all those qualities which render personal life in 
nature and among other persons precious; rather what- 
soever things are good, or beautiful, or true in human 
hearts and homes; whatever makes our lives with one 
another most real and dear, and worth Hving forever: 
these are the things we remember and think of and blend 
together and would find made perfect and transfigured 
in our idea of God. We would have an idealism of realism 
— an idealism that does not lose at any point vital con- 
tact with the real in life and thought. It is not enough 
for a philosophy to take its start from something real in 
experience, whether that be the sensational point of the 
positivist, or the primary ideas of the intuitionalist, or 
the feeling of the mystics, or lately the non-spatial and 
unintellectual movement of life in which Bergson de- 
lights. So far, so good; there are many points of reality 
from which a philosophy may start. But when from its 
chosen point of attachment to something actual a phi- 
losophy proceeds to spin out a comphcated web of ideas, 



PERSONAL REALISM— CONCLUSION 341 

with scarce another thread to hold it fast to realities, 
it resembles the web of a flying spider left hanging in 
the air. No thinking, positivist or ideaHst, scientific 
or metaphysical, can be thoroughly true unless all the 
way along it keeps in close touch with real life. The 
fallacy and the unreaHty of many scientific, as well as 
metaphysical or theological views, lies often in their 
mistaking a special relation or a partial knowledge for 
the entire relations of nature and a larger acquaintance 
with human Hfe. 

The pertinence of this remark may appear if we com- 
pare three current conceptions of reahty — a scientific, 
a rationaHstic, and a vitaHstic. The first is the definition 
of the real as given by a geometer, Federico Enriques, 
in a recent book on Problems of Science. He says: "Our 
belief in the reahty of a thing rests upon a totahty of 
sensations which invariably follow under certain con- 
ditions arranged at will" (p. 56). The second is the con- 
ception expressed in Hegel's oft-quoted maxim: "The 
rational is real and the real is rational." The third con- 
ception is Bergson's dominating idea, which might be 
compressed in a formula antithetic to HegeFs, thus: "The 
vital movement is the real, and the vital is not the in- 
tellectual." To which Bergsonian tablet should be added, 
of course, his caution against mixing our existence in 
time with our being in space. Now each of these very 
different ideas of reahty is vaHd as a partial truth and as 
far as it goes. Neither corresponds to our experience of 
reality as a whole. If one takes his departure from either, 
and does not carry something of the other with it 
in his thinking, he will reach a fragmentary and dis- 
torted view of the world. Thus the first definition of 
the real, in terms of sense-experience, is good for scientific 
purposes, but is not enough to live by — true for the 
laboratory but not the whole truth of the home. Hegel's 
dictum marks well one note of truth; but by itself alone 



342 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

it turns actual human history into a course of logic. And 
notwithstanding Bergson's brilliant service in bringing 
into clear recognition the spontaneous movement, the 
non-spatial continuity, the creative evolution of Hfe, his 
throwing the intellectual factor out of its place in the 
whole living process robs life of rational reaUty and 
confidence. In his dissociation of time from space he has 
disentangled a single thread of which the pattern of life 
is woven, and held it up in clear light for philosophy to 
take notice of it; but in actual living, in the living as 
well as afterward in the lived, the two are woven together, 
and the ideas of space and time cling together so per- 
sistently that even Bergson with all his skill in analysis 
finds it well-nigh impossible to keep them from tangling 
themselves up even while he is deftly untwisting them. 
The vital point of advancing Hfe is not so single and 
simple a thing; the whole of personal being is in every 
part of it, though no point is the whole of it. We may 
keenly and with profit analyze ourselves to pieces; but 
it is the task of a philosophy true to the Hfe to put us to- 
gether again — to see us whole. Biologically speaking, 
the dominants of personaUty are all given in the germ, 
they work together throughout its development, they 
constitute together its mature value and full meaning. 
Individual personaHty is both real and ideal, or, more 
truly it might be said, both reaHzing and ideaHzing. It is 
both created and creative. It inherits its world as already 
existing for it, and it re-creates it after its own ideas. It 
is both effect and cause; both the issue of the past and 
a maker of the future. It has come forth from the whole 
of Reality that was before it; it continues to be as an in- 
dividual variable in the midst of the constants of nature. 
It makes its own impression on the world into which 
without consent of its own it entered: its influence re- 
mains in the environment of the new life that follows 
after it. A personal being is not one in a series of num- 



PERSONAL REALISM— CONCLUSION 343 

bers; the personal life is both history and prophecy. 
Its past is its promise. Its measure is not to be told by 
the number of its days. Its successes may be its failures, 
its loss its gain, death its victory. Through individual 
lives the past becomes the future, the old world is made 
new. Through personal influence the idea is transubstan- 
tiated into the fact; the ideahsm of one is made the 
heritage of the many. And without idealism human Ufe 
would fail and fade into bare and colorless existence. 

It would require too many pages for us to distinguish and 
classify the varieties of idealists and realists now in evidence. 
Instead of a few typical schools of philosophy and a limited 
number of representative names, as was formerly the case, we 
now have a large number of critical teachers whose views can 
hardly be defined by any of the older philosophical distinctions. 
This is due largely to the shock given to established systems of 
philosophy by the sudden impact of modern scientific concep- 
tions. Old ideas attacked by new knowledge have to find 
safety in hastily constructed intrenchments. And pseudo- 
scientific philosophies are apt to be as positive as they are ad- 
venturous. 

On the idealistic side Mr. Bradley's Appearance and Reality 
has been so long in the field that it needs here only honorable 
mention. The more recent effort of Mr. Bosanquet {Principle 
of Individuality and Value) to find an abiding-place for the in- 
dividual in the Absolute is of interest, but it is difficult for any 
one who is not a thoroughgoing idealist to follow. Less ab- 
stract and not so sure of itself as having the key to the last 
house of refuge for metaphysics is the semi-pragmatic school 
of Personal Idealism. Our general criticism of this mode of 
philosophizing would be that their idealism is not personal 
enough; it appears to have grown up in the academic study 
rather than out of common human experience. Its theory of 
truth, for example, is not equal to the sturdy conviction of 
certainty which grows up on the common ground of human ex- 
perience. As matter of fact, people in general live in a more 
deeply rooted belief in truth, and the psychology of conviction 
is the real thing to be accounted for in a theory of knowledge. 



344 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

Recently the older views of direct perception have been put 
in a new form by a number of philosophical teachers who de- 
scribe their view as the New Realism. Its most notable feature 
is said to be "the emancipation of metaphysics from episte- 
mology." It begins, that is, with the endeavor through analysis 
of the facts involved in the act of knowing to discover what 
the nature of things is. It would find out what is actually 
given in the relation of knowing things antecedently to and in- 
dependently of any theory of knowledge, as well as irrespective 
of any conclusions which may follow concerning the ultimate 
principles or values of the external world. 

It holds that "consciousness is a selective response to a pre- 
existing and independently existing environment." There must 
be something to be responded to if there is to be any response. 
"Our knowing, moreover, is itself a fact to be taken in its place 
with the whole manifold of the things that are known." In 
short, for the realists knowledge plays its part within an inde- 
pendent environment. It is likewise held that a thoroughly 
realistic view of the relation of the object known and the knower 
of it is consistent with opposite conclusions as to the nature of 
the ultimate relations of both. "The point at issue between 
realism and ideaHsm should not be confused with the points at 
issue between naturalism and spiritualism, automatism and in- 
teractionism, empiricism and rationalism, or plurahsm and 
absolutism." (The citations are from Mr. R. B. Perry's volvune 
on Present Philosophical Tendencies, passim.) I would add that 
the new realist cannot consistently be in the same breath a real- 
ist toward the outward world and a phenomenalist toward 
himself. The new reaHsm remains true to its first postulate only 
when it leaves the door wide open to a new idealism. 

In this connection reference should be made to recent dis- 
cussions of the principle of Relativity. There has lately come 
into the field, with a challenge to prevailing postulates, a new 
geometry and mathematics, and also an upsetting dynamics 
and mechanics. These new theories have become experimen- 
tally possible in consequence of the discovery of rays of very 
high velocities. The phenomena connected with their behavior 
compel reconsideration of fundamental theorems of the New- 
tonian dynamics, as, for instance, the law of inertia. While 
mechanics is thus obliged to re-examine its own basic principles, 



PERSONAL REALISM— CONCLUSION 345 

it may not claim so confidently to be sufficient of itself to be the 
foundation for the whole of human experience. Professor Loeb's 
cock-sure mechanistic biology may yet have a searching side- 
Hght thrown upon it by a new mechanics. These partly ex- 
perimental and partly speculative theories, however, are as yet 
only possible beginnings of new and verified knowledge. For a 
general account of them the student may be referred to R. En- 
riques's Problems of Science, and Henri Poincare's Science and 
Method. It is noteworthy that this most eminent mathemati- 
cian still maintains the function of intuition in mathematical 
discovery, and holds the validity of Kant's synthetic a priori 
judgment. 

The world-view which we have thus reached at the 
close of this inquiry leaves us face to face with the Chris- 
tian belief in God. Is the idea of God in the Christian 
consciousness of his presence a real response to the real 
nature of God? In what correspondence to the Chris- 
tian experience may we have true knowledge of God? 
In what measure may the personal life at its truest and 
its best interpret the living God? 

In preceding chapters at several successive points we 
have observed suggestive indications of theistic mean- 
ings in the course of nature and life. We have not, how- 
ever, turned aside from our immediate pursuit to follow 
such suggestions into the field of Christian theology. 
To do this would require another volume. But our pres- 
ent task would be left incomplete without some indica- 
tion of the relation of our conclusion to religious belief; 
and also a recognition of the urgent need at the present 
time of a thoroughly scientific natural theology for the 
restatement of the doctrines of the Christian faith. On 
scientific grounds a reassurance of religious faith is to 
be won. It must suffice for us to suggest merely how, 
in accordance with the line of investigation which we 
have endeavored to pursue, an answer to the questions 
just raised may be sought. 



346 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

Intellectually to apprehend the measure in which the 
Christian consciousness may interpret the nature of God, 
we must first go down to the ultimate reahty of our own 
nature and its significance. We may have no assurance 
of existence other than our own either on earth or in 
heaven, unless we shall first find it implicitly given in 
our immediate experience of what the personal Hfe is 
and means to ourselves. Otherwise no proof brought 
from without can create a God for us; no sign from heaven 
would have real meaning of divineness to us. If God 
does not exist prior to our reflection within the reality 
of our very being, he will only exist as an idea at the 
end of all our argument to prove his existence. But a 
God beUeved in as the conclusion of a process of thought 
is not the living God of human history, is not God mani- 
fested in Christ. It is just this human sense of the im- 
manence of something diviner in nature and in man that 
accounts for the persistent hold which the so-called 
ontological proof of the existence of God has had in 
reUgious thought, although its logical sufl&ciency has 
often been shown to be unequal to the weight of the 
conclusion made dependent upon it. The conviction 
does not depend on the reason given for it; the convic- 
tion has first grown out of the deeps of personal experi- 
ence, and the reasoning is an effort to clear up the ground 
from which the conviction has issued. The ontological 
proof runs usually as follows : We have the idea of perfect 
being; existence is involved in the idea of perfect being; 
hence the perfect being exists. But it is difficult to see 
how out of pure thinking we can extract actual existence. 
From an idea we may reach an ideal existence. The 
force of the ontological argument lies in the fact that it 
does not start merely from an idea but from an experi- 
ence, of which the idea is a symbol or representation — 
something implicit in our own personal being which is 
other than self, and of the nature of which we are par- 



PERSONAL REALISM— CONCLUSION 347 

takers. Belief that the perfect being exists is not merely 
a conclusion reached by an abstract process of reasoning; 
it is the resultant of a real process of Hfe. It is a thinking 
out what we have Hved into. Its compeUing force will 
be for every man a question of fact — the fact of the sum 
total of his experience of himself as a personal being. 
His philosophy of religion will be not a logical deduction, 
but an induction from the history of religions, from the 
total complex of the reUgious experience of mankind. 
For us, in harmony with the method of inquiry we have 
been following, the evidence of the divine existence is 
not static but dynamic; it is not to make oneself beHeve 
in God, but to discover the divine significance of human 
life. Such conclusion, so far as one may attain it in this 
living way, will have the same kind and degree of as- 
surance as that of his certainty of his personal existence. 
He cannot prove it; neither can he doubt it. Such was 
the certainty of the most human of all Hves — the Christ 
knew himself and his Father.^ 

We have not thus far touched upon the question 
whether God can be conceived of as having in himself 
personaHty. Without entering here into the meta- 
physical problems which have been raised by this ques- 
tion, we may indicate briefly the method of approach to 
this subject which naturally follows from the course of 
this inquiry. Looking on and up toward the supreme 
Being, the Absolute One, we should carry our concep- 
tions of what we have found to be real and of worth in 
the personal life as far and as high as thought can go. 
An element or quahty which in our human experience 
we recognize as very Hfe of our life must be not less but 
infinitely more so in the Perfect One. An Absolute in 
which the truth of our personal being is lost becomes 

^ This ground of the idea of God in the reality of experience is forcibly 
presented in Professor Hocking's volume on The Meaning of God in Human 
Experience, chap. XXII. 



348 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

meaningless in our conception of it. Personality in our 
individual consciousness of being is finite, limited, im- 
perfect; but we may recognize degrees in the realiza- 
tion of our own personality; life with us is a develop- 
ment of it. Its enlargement and enrichment may be 
conceived to be extended indefinitely. Its centre of in- 
dividual being is constant while its circumference may 
be always expanding. Thus finite personality tends 
toward an infinite personaHty. God is that infinite 
personality in whom all fulness dwells. If, as is some- 
times said, there may be a mode of being that is higher 
than our personal mode, that must realize perfectly 
our personal life while it transcends it. It would not 
be super-personal, were it to become impersonal. The 
highest relations which we realize in our human lives 
are our personal relations with one another. The Chris- 
tian faith that God is in personal relation to man is in 
its last simplicity trust that God can be perfectly all 
that we may become to one another, and more than 
all. "He fulfils himself in many ways." 

Another question should not be left unnoticed as we 
come thus to a theistic conclusion. Can we expect to 
know more of God? As human experience lengthens 
with the generations, as man's knowledge of nature on 
either side, the material and the spiritual, reaches further 
toward the beginning and the end, shall man know more 
of God? Has his presence now ceased to be self-reveal- 
ing? Unless our whole way of searching nature thus 
far has been misleading, and all the signs we have ob- 
served shall prove deceptive, the answer to this inquiry 
is clear and positive. The self-revelation of God on this 
earth is not finished. If men have eyes to see and ears 
to hear, there is and always shall be more manifestation 
of the Divine to be seen; there shall be further teachings 
of the Spirit to be understood by men. The Christian 
faith least of all may regard the revelation of God as a 



PERSONAL REALISM— CONCLUSION 349 

closed book. To think of the world problems, to judge 
of the ways of the living God as though Divine revelation 
had come to an abrupt pause at the end of the apostolic 
age, or at any hour since of the Lord's presence among 
men, would be to empty of its full meaning his last promise 
to his disciples to be with them always even to the end 
of the world. A sure faith must needs be a progressive 
faith to keep its own assurance. For Christian theology 
at any hour to halt, and to remain content to stand still 
marking time, would be for theology to lose its leadership 
of thought and to be disobedient to the spirit of truth. 

The only question to be considered is: In what ways 
may man expect to be led to larger knowledge of God? 
Wait, we are told, on the Lord. It is hard on the field 
of battle to wait under fire for orders to press forward; 
and it seems at times more than can be borne, in the 
thick of the conflict between good and evil, or in the 
face of overwhelming tragedy, to be still and wait on the 
Lord. The spectacle of others suffering — a vast mass 
of utter human wretchedness, a whole region laid waste, 
a harvest of desolation and death — the letting loose by 
accident of pent-up fires or floods, or a day of judgment 
coming suddenly in the wars and the woes of the nations — 
it is enough to make faith itseK recoil, and to cause the 
heart of humanity to cry out: Where is God? Once 
Thomas Carlyle, walking the streets of London with a 
friend at night, exclaimed: "How can God see all this, and 
be still?" So that spiritual genius, Edward Irving, the 
signs of God's presence for which he looked having not 
been given, and his prophetic dream failing, in the solitude 
of the highlands of Scotland looked up to the untroubled 
sky, and said: "Why does not God rend the heavens and 
come down?" But another, a social worker of larger 
charity and clearer vision has said that often, when over- 
borne by the wretchedness which he must see while at 
his work at midnight in darkest London, he had been 



3SO THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

upheld by the thought, how many miles of streets there 
were where honest people were sleeping that they might 
begin another day's honest toil. There are many who 
without needing signs of the coming of the Son of man, 
or rending of the heavens, have waited on the Lord in 
the way of judgment, and have followed on to know ''His 
going forth," which *'is sure as the morning" (Hosea 6 : 3). 

The question just raised concerning possible increase 
in the knowledge of God involves more than such indi- 
vidual growth in faith; it is the larger question whether 
through social experience of God, and in the progress of 
human Ufe as a connected whole, there may be expected 
further revelation of Divinity. 

It is possible indeed that spiritual disclosures may oc- 
cur in the future, which now we have no reason to ex- 
pect; we may not, however, consider such manifestations 
in any practical working-view of our present life. If 
once it was possible for the Christ so to have lived on 
the earth as to show men the Father, we may not think 
it impossible for God to appear in any future age in some 
visible sign of his presence and power. Such visible re- 
assurance of faith should be regarded as a question of 
moral probability rather than of natural possibility; 
faith may venture only to assume that whatever kind or 
measure of the reveaUng of spiritual reality may be best 
in the divine education of the race (to use Lessing's ex- 
pression of a great truth) will be granted from age to 
age. Whatever in the wisdom of God is best in order 
that the love of God may do its perfect work shall not be 
withheld. The Christ himself asked for no more. He 
would not know the times and seasons while in his daily 
life reveahng his God to men. 

If we may not look, then, for any immediate second com- 
ing of Christ, neither are we helped if we turn back and 
look for more certain and fuller knowledge of what Jesus 
did and said when once he lived his heavenly life on earth. 



PERSONAL REALISM— CONCLUSION 351 

Of late years we have recovered a few fragments of rec- 
ords that throw Hght on those early times; but we may 
not hope to know much better from historical studies 
the life and word of Jesus. Perhaps there is a wiser 
providence than we may have understood in the singular 
circumstance that in an age of written memorials and 
extensive literature the New Testament remained so 
small a book. Its documentary sources, all other records 
of Jesus' sa3dngs, or letters that his first disciples may 
.have written, when correspondence throughout the 
Roman world was not infrequent, seem to have been 
blotted out, as though some unseen hand would leave 
a clear space around this one, sohtary New Testament 
for the church to keep sacred to the end of time. Over 
the period between the Ufetime of those who could bear 
witness of Jesus and the age after the apostoKc, there 
seems to have fallen a sudden silence : across that interval 
of history, hidden from view as a mist lying over the 
lowland hides the approaches to a mountain, we look 
and behold, rising clear above all, the single and supreme 
person of the Christ. We may better know the Christ 
in the glory of his presence, because we may thus look up 
to him above aU around him; even as the last of the 
apostles knew him far enough away from his earthly 
circumstance to know him in his transcendence after the 
Spirit. 

We may not then expect to know more of God by 
recovering much more, if any, historical material for 
new Hves of Jesus. A hundred, a thousand years hence, 
the knowledge of God which was given in these Gospels 
will remain what it is for us now. But there are divers 
manners in which, as in time past by the prophets, God 
may speak to his people. Among these possible ways 
of continued reveahngs of truth the following may be 
regarded as opening before us. 

I. Man may know more of God as the sciences shall 



352 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

discover more and more the ruling ideas in the order of 
nature. Little by little, part by part, natural science is 
putting us in possession of the working plans of the uni- 
verse. God's thoughts, said a prophet of old, are not 
as our thoughts. God thinks in suns and stars. It was 
Kepler, the astronomer, who said, when he had demon- 
strated the laws of planetary motions: "I think God's 
thoughts after Him." "And His ways are not as our 
ways"; — was it not Plato who said, "God geometrizes " ? 
Modern mathematics is following the ways of the Divine 
geometrician's formative ideas in infinite space. In the 
forms and the organization of the forces of nature there 
are the first principles and the constructive ideas of the 
heavens and the earth to be mastered by the sciences. 
God waits in nature to be found out. 

Consider how much man has learned of God's first 
principles and continuous mode of procedure since that 
ancient Hebrew seer had his wonderful vision of the 
orderly succession of the days in the Genesis of the 
heavens and the earth. Recent science has carried 
verifiable knowledge down into the elements of the crea- 
tion further than Hebrew prophet could possibly have 
seen. Physical demonstration of the first motions and 
radiances of ethereal space enables us to conceive more 
intelligibly how, in the darkness over the face of the deep, 
there was light. The Mosaic word concerning the crea- 
tion of the world runs truly thus: "And the earth was 
without form and void." Our latest scientific formula 
for the creation, with profounder knowledge, runs thus: 
The ether of space was without form and void of atomic 
matter. And with still more intimate truth the science 
of to-morrow may disclose the hiding-places of creative 
power. Beyond each, yesterday's and to-day's and to- 
morrow's, account of the genesis of the heavens and the 
earth, the mystery of all origins waits for further reveal- 
ings; — "In the beginning — God." Such revealings of 



PERSONAL REALISM— CONCLUSION 353 

the mystery of godliness become more manifest as the 
material in our scientific knowledge of it becomes a veil 
of thinner texture, and through that which is natural 
reason draws nearer the spirit of the whole creation. 

Consider, again, how much more man has learned of 
the ways of the Almighty by his searching than Job by 
all his questionings could find out. Reflect upon the 
surprises of knowledge which, even within the memory 
of those now Hving, have come to us from out of the 
depths of the riches of God's works. We know to-day 
far more minutely and intimately the world in which 
we live than it was known but yesterday. Discoveries 
which at first were startHng have now become famiHar 
knowledge and useful arts. The alphabet of the language 
in which the heavens declare the glory of God has been 
deciphered in the lines of the spectroscope. Space, 
empty to the eye, has become to scientific intelHgence 
filled with pulsations and powers from all infinitude. We 
are handling in our factories forces of which our fathers 
had not heard, and commanding powers of the air to 
carry even the voices of men across the seas as we our- 
selves but recently never dreamed. So in the world's 
work, too unconsciously it may be, we are using thoughts 
of God in things. Some day in all this wondrous knowl- 
edge man may awake to find himself nearer the Hving 
One. 

2. God may be better known through the making of 
history. The world we live in is not finished; all the 
known universe is still in the making. We speak of 
crises fraught with momentous issues in which, we say, 
history was made. In such hours the grand strategy, the 
large strategic plan of Providence, has been and shall 
be disclosed; history is always being made, and the 
prophet is he who has eyes to see, and who, hearing, may 
understand what God is doing in his world to-day. He 
foresees in the present what others shall see on some to- 



354 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

morrow. History in the making may be a disappoint- 
ment of human hopes ; it is really a progressive fulfilment 
of God's promise. History is a book of revelation. As 
the generations turn its pages, the will of God is better 
known. Consider how much fuller and richer is the ma- 
terial which we have in this age than the apostles could 
have possessed for understanding what God meant for 
the whole world in the life and death of Christ. The 
horizons of their world were narrow, and they understood 
not what measure of time was needed for their gospel 
to be preached among all nations. The universals of 
Paul's epistles, "all things," "the fulness of the time," 
"to sum up all things in Christ," "the whole creation," 
"the earnest expectation of the whole creation," "the 
fulness of him that fiUeth all in all" — these words take 
on larger meanings, comprehend vaster spaces, declare 
a more stupendous conflict of the ages, and are prophetic 
of more glorious consummation than the Apostle Paul 
within the boundaries of the known Roman world could 
ever have foreknown. History puts new meaning into 
old words. The very words of the New Testament, and 
the virtues taught in it, have become fraught with mem- 
ories of the Christian ages and draw richer meanings 
from the Hves of believers who through these many 
generations have lived in the spirit of the Christ who 
once walked with his disciples in Galilee, His Chris- 
tianity is always a revelation. It may be better known 
another day than it ever as yet has been. Up to the 
present hour and in the coming years his word is true: 
"My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." There is 
more of God for us in this twentieth century to learn 
than there was a hundred years ago, because God in 
Christ has done more in the world. There will be more 
a hundred years from now. 

3. God may become more truly known through the 
further development of man's higher nature. That may 



PERSONAL REALISM— CONCLUSION 355 

become more spiritually receptive. This is true of the in- 
dividual; his mind may gain more capacity of spiritual 
discernment; as his heart becomes more pure he may 
more clearly see God. To believe as immortals we must 
live as immortals. What is thus true of the increase of 
the individual's knowledge of God holds good likewise of 
the social growth in spiritual wisdom. There may be 
new social knowledge of God; there will be, as Christian- 
ity purifies and enlarges the social consciousness. Through 
such higher Christian development humanity shall gain 
happier sense of divinity and ampler understanding of 
the breadth and the height of the love of God for the 
world. 

4. Furthermore, at needed times and for epoch-making 
seasons, God may give to the world men chosen from 
their birth and called to be bearers of his purposes and 
revealers of his meanings to their fellow men. Such were 
the prophets of old; such have been men of rare spir- 
itual genius; such shall be in the coming years the cho- 
sen teachers, poets, and prophets in the divine educa- 
tion of the race. 

I should be led far beyond the limits of this volume 
should I follow out these inquiries into the field of Chris- 
tian doctrine. But at the close I would emphasize the 
need of such studies of natural revelation for the rejuvenes- 
cence of the theology of the church. The great principles 
of Christianity need to be brought out anew in the light 
of natural science. Although the term "natural theology" 
in distinction from "revealed theology" has of late largely 
disappeared from usage, a new natural theology, con- 
structed of scientific materials already waiting for the 
builder, is a much-needed preparation for a presentation 
of the Christian doctrines that shall meet the needs of 
intelligent minds at the present time. The modern mind 
will not find itself at home in a theology which is not in 



356 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

harmony with scientific knowledge of the fundamental 
facts and principles of nature. Accurate and thorough 
familiarity with the natural sciences was never more 
desirable in the schools of religion than it is at the present 
time ; for, if Christian theology is to hold its place among 
thoughtful men, if it is to lead again, as of old, the forces 
of education, it must keep up with the advance of knowl- 
edge and be found thinking clearly and fearlessly at the 
front of all inquiries. 

We have had occasion at several points in the preceding 
pages to call attention to the fallacy of the closed system 
in certain scientific views of Hfe. The same fallacy has 
been the too-easily besetting sin of theology. But so 
soon as a system of beliefs stops growing it is ripe for 
dissolution. A finished system of theology is a dead 
body of divinity. At the growing point knowledge of 
nature and of God must be kept free. The bane of 
theological thinking has been, not that with prolonged 
labor it has made systems of doctrine, but that after 
they were once completed they have not been broken 
up. By this it is by no means intended to disparage 
studious endeavor to systematize knowledge, or to de- 
preciate the value of the intellectual work of organizing 
ideas into an ordered and consistent whole. As one must 
have a house to live in, so reason must needs build for 
itself a system of ideas in which to dwell comfortably. 
But the habitual dwelling-place of one's thoughts should 
be open-windowed and hospitable to all truths that may 
knock at its door. Nor is this all: a man is wont to go 
daily out of his house into the fresh air and sunshine; 
so the thinker who would think well, whether he be 
scientist, philosopher, or theologian, should not remain 
too constantly within his own system, still less fall asleep 
in it. He must needs go out of doors. The theologian 
most of all should go forth from his system to find at 
times a broader view — an out-of-door theology beyond 



PERSONAL REALISM— CONCLUSION 357 

the narrow horizons of his definitions, invigorating as 
the fresh air of the morning, boundless as the ocean, 
large as the sky for all the clouds of doubt to float and 
dissolve in, serene and opening vistas of light beyond 
hght as the heavens at evening time. So Jesus spake 
his parables while conversing with his disciples under 
the clear Syrian sky; and he blessed the multitude on 
the mountainside. He Uved with his God out of doors, 
and taught not as the scribes in the synagogue. 

Jesus never finished his teaching. Among his last 
words, did he not say to his disciples: "Ye shall know 
hereafter" ? And it was one who had traced in his Gospel 
the course of all things accurately from the first, who 
was also St. Paul's biographer, who tells us that he had 
written of "all that Jesus began both to do and to teach, 
until the day in which he was taken up." Those beginnings 
of teaching and work were with authority and power; 
the church has neither authority nor power to hold them 
as completed. In these times new problems of science 
invite Theology to go to school to Nature that it may be- 
come fitted to survive in the midst of the conditions of 
modern thought. The attitude of the modern mind is 
not so much a questioning of particular teachings of 
religion as it is a vague uncertainty concerning the real- 
ity of all behefs that Ue beyond the reach of immediate 
verifiable experience. Yet the problems of science more 
than ever before are opening out toward the super- 
sensible, the creative, the eternal. In this diffuse and 
often unwilling scepticism the spirituality of the reverent 
scientific mind is the type of spirituality that shall best 
avail. Well, then, may it be for the future of the Chris- 
tian faith if the schools of religion shall imitate the 
great Teacher, that they likewise may say to the masters 
of our scientific age: "If I told you earthly things and ye 
believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you heavenly 
things?" 



358 THE MEANING OF PERSONAL LIFE 

Those who, before the ever-opening mystery of nature 
and life, would know, who, as said a prophet of old, "would 
follow on to know the Lord," shall not fail of vision and 
hope. They shall know more deeply the secret of divin- 
ity at nature's heart. They shall understand more simply 
and wisely the meaning of the personal Hfe. For them, 
in its immortal worth, more than they may know, it shall 
be the life which is hid with Christ in God. 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 



AUotta, 22. 
Aquinas, 58, 131. 
Aristotle, 15, 32, 106. 
.Arrhenius, 8. 
Augustine, St., 56, 131, 20Q. 

Bacon, Lord, 18. 
Bain, 117. 

Baldwin, J. M., 337. 
Bergson, 38-40, 51, 56, 58, 70, 79, 94, 96, 
113, 153, 165. 179, 190, 279» 341. 342. 
Bosanquet, 90, 125, 178, 343. 
Boscowitch, 128. 
Bradley, 54, 185, 271, 272, 343. 
Bridgewater Treatises, 12. 
Brit. Joum. of Psy., 34. 
Browning, 323. 
Buckle, 179. 
Biisse, L., 65, 124. 

Calkins, G. A., 25, 41. 
Campbell, 148. 
Carlyle, 244. 
Child, C. M., 171. 
Clark, E. H., 322. 
Clifford, 256, 315. 
Clough, 276. 

Darwin, 14, 18, 34, 95. 
Darwin, Francis, 43. 
Descartes, 15, 131. 
De Vries, 18, 198. 
Donaldson, H. H., 142, 147. 
Drews, 200. 
Driesch, 15, 26. 
Du Bois-Raymond, 19. 

Enriques, Federico, 341, 345. 
Erskine, Thomas, 56. 

Fechter, 132. 
Fiske, John, 83, 109. 
Flechsig, 148. 

Galloway, George, 126. 
Goethe, 337. 



Haldane, J. S., 19. 
Haller, 249. 

Hegel, 90, 137, 248, 341. 
Henderson, L. J., 13. 
Heraclitus, 189. 
Herder, 298. 
Hobhouse, 89. 
Hocking, 230, 338, 347. 
HoweU, 147, 148. 
Huxley, 117. 

James, Wm., 97, 115, 118, 240, 255, 

256, 287. 
Jennings, 42. 
Judd, 97, 98. 

Kaftan, 226. 

Kant, 106, 127, 128, 132, 133, 190, 252, 

257, 336, 339, 345- 
Keller, Helen, 187. 
Kelvin, 189. 
Kepler, 221, 352. 
Kirchoff, 30. 

Ladd, 167. 

Lamarckians, 34. 

Lewes, 117. 

Leibnitz, 131, 268. 

Lessing, 261, 304. 

Lockyer, J. N., 8. 

Loeb, 16, 21/., 76, 345, 

Lotze, IS, 103, 122, 123, 126,-337. 

Lucretius, 46. 

McDougall, Wm., 34, 90, 138, 278-279, 

283, 284, 290. 
Mach, 132, 177. 
Mackintosh, H. R., 211. 
Maxwell, 122. 
Merz, 30, 336, 337. 
Meyers, C. S., 34. 
Milton, 181. 

Morgan, C. Lloyd, 4, 34, 35, 38, 44, 179. 
Morgan, T. H., 19. 
Mozely, 63. 
Munsterberg, 125. 



359 



36o 



INDEX 



Neo-Darwinians, i8, 34. 
Nitsch, 231. 
Nolle, 26. 

D'OssoU, Margaret Fuller, 244. 
Ostwald, 128, 129. 

Perry, R. B., 344. 
Plato, 90, 272, 352. 
Plotinus, 272. 
Poincar6, Henri, 345. 
Pratt, J. B., 229. 

Rayleigh, 130. 
Righi, A., 6, 7. 
Rignano, 42. 
Royce, 20, 318. 
Rutherford, 6. 

Sanday, Canon, 225. 
Schafer, Sir Edw. A., lo. 
Schelling, 337. 
Schiller, 257, 266, 268, 337. 
Schleiermacher, 229. 
Sherrington, 26, 28, 30, 32, 71, 75, 167, 
171. 



Sidis, Boris, 163, 164. 
Simpson, J. Y., 326. 
Spinoza, 117, 123, 272. 
Stout, 34. 
Strong, C. A., 125. 

Taylor, Isaac, 311, 325. 
Tennyson, 272. 
Tertullian, 131. 
Thomson, J. J., 127, 128, 327. 
Titchener, 105. 

Ulrici, 132. 

Von Hiigel, Baron, 58, 123, 230. 

Ward, 266. 

Washburn, M. F., 68H59. 

Weismann, 84. 

Wellhausen, 215. 

Whewell, 12. 

Whittier, 317, 323. 

Wilson, 327. 

WolfE, 249. 

Woodruff, R. S., 65. 

Woodworth, 167. 

Wundt, 35, 94, 96, 106, 118, 183-184. 



INDEX OF SUBJECTS 



/Esthetic sense, value of, 336. 
Aphasia, 160 /. 

Beautiful, the, sense of, 98, 336. 
.Body, primary consciousness of, 116; 
double aspect theory of body and 
mind, 117; theory of parallelism, 
117 /.; interaction of body and mind, 
120. 

Brain, growth of, 141; relation to men- 
tal development in childhood, 145; in 
education, and mature life, 150 f.; 
psychical influence over, 186. 

Christian consciousness, 236^. 

Christian faith a development, 248 
world-view, 252. 

Christianity, creative spirit of, 23 s f- 
power to change environment, 250. 

Closed system, 122; in theology, 356 
Spinoza on, 123. 

Consciousness, first awareness of self as 
acting, 48; occasion of self -conscious- 
ness, 149; of personal unity, S9. 334- 
See Christian, Mind, ■passim. 

Creation, not finished, 236. 

Creative synthesis, 184, 235; of man's 
environment, 186. 

Death, an act, 257; approach to, 320; 
service of in natural evolution, 49, 
301. 

Development, Newman's theory of, 248. 

Dualism, 66, 116, 125, 335. See also re- 
lation of body and mind. 

Education, of animals, 82; self -educa- 
tion of the child, 82. 

Energetics, 128. 

Energy, Christian experience of, 240; 
in thinking, 86, 92; personal energy a 
force in evolution, 187; potential and 
kinetic in thinking, 88; psychical in- 
crease of, 182. 



Feeling, 94 jf .; accompanies mental ac- 
tivities, 94; characters of, 100/.; cog- 
nitive value of, 102, 227; deeper psy- 
chic feelings, 96; of moral values and 
absolute dependence, 228 /.; Jesus' 
feeling, 232 /.; sensations distin- 
guished from, 95. 

Fitness, elementary sign of, 7. 

Form, problem of in elements, 7; in 
nervous system, 32. 

Fusion, of optical images, 71 #. 

Future life, conceptions of, 292; diffi- 
culty of conceiving, 324; exercise of 
our higher powers in, 329; use of 
memory and imagination in thinking 
of, 324. See also Immortality, and 
Death. 



God, Christian belief in, 345; further 
knowledge of, 348; personality of, 
347; kingdom of, 227/. 



Idealism, 137, 343. 

Immortality, approached from nature- 
side, 253; conditional, 268; culmi- 
nating assurance of in Christ, 306; 
difficulty of imagining, 258; disciples' 
faith in, 308; expectation of, from 
moral values, 311 /.; faith in, related 
to values, 272; integrity of personal 
life in, 273; Jesus' revelation of, in 
personal terms, 309; loss of personal 
in the absolute, 271; maintenance of 
memory in, 275 /.; natural, 270; no 
necessary presumption against, 253; 
primary factors of, 274 /.; revelation 
of, would not be contrary to science, 
264; theories of, 266 f.; reasoning 
for, from analogy, 313; viewed in re- 
lation to moral order, 260; the will to 
live immortally, 285, 317. 

Incarnation, doctrine of, 211, note. 



361 



362 



INDEX 



Individuality, personal, i6gf.; animal, 
172; characteristics of personal, 174 
/.; evolution of natural individuality, 
171; realized in society, 179. 

Instinct, 32 f.; Bergson's view of, 38; 
characteristics of, 40; consciousness 
and instinct, 38. 



Jesus Christ, the fulfilment of personal 
life, 19s f.; eschatological teaching 
of, 22s, note ; feeling of, 227, 232 /.; 
final revelation of personal life, 234; 
heredity of, 200; historical truth con- 
cerning, 198; healing ministry of, 206; 
known in Christian consciousness, 
213; mind of, 217; natural prepara- 
tion for his coming, 196 /.; physical 
characters of, 201; potential Christ of 
history, 215; power over physical 
forces, 303 /. 

Judgment, acts of, 92 /. 



Eongdom of God, Christian conscious- 
ness of, 221/. 

Knowledge, positive, physical and men- 
tal, 13s; of God, 348 /.; validity of 
partial knowledge, 332. 

Life, fitness of environment for, 11 ff.; 
mechanical theory of, 15, 21, note; 
origin of, 10; reconciliation with, 243 ; 
signs of meaning in, 17; worth of, 
243. 

Mass, 6, 128. 

Matter, beginnings of, 6; elementary 
problem of form, 7; its sign of fitness, 
11; materialistic and spiritual theo- 
ries of, 188. 

Memory, beginnings of, 66; biological 
explanation of, 82 ff., 167; distinc- 
tive characters of, 77; hypothesis of 
memory-cells, 84, 153; in animals, 76, 
82; interpretative sign of, 86; in fu- 
ture life, 276/.; losses of, 158, 160/.; 
memory-images, origin of, 68; psychic 
potentiality of, 282; power to forget, 
76; relation to sense-perception, 69; 
source of, 75. 

Method of inquiry, i /. 



Mind, beginnings of, 24; mind-stuff, 
256; ideational power of, 219; irre- 
ducible to matter, 91, 137; relation of 
body and mind, 115 f.; rudimentary 
in matter, 25. 

Miracles, 208, 304, 311. 

Nervous system, elementary, 26; de- 
velopment of, 28; significant charac- 
teristics, 29 /. 

Organic control, highest power of, 60; 
reaction, 35. 

Perceptions, not measurable as physical 
quantities, 75. See aho Sense-Percep- 
tions. 

Personal realism, 330 ff.; as a world- 
view, 340; three conceptions of real- 
ity, 341; what is the real? 331 ^. 

Personality, constant of consciousness, 
116, 137; development of, 140^.; final 
significance of, 234; real and ideal, 
342; unity of, 59, no, 334. 

Poetic interpretation of nature, 193. 

Pragmatic philosophy, 103. 

Psychical power over ohysical, 289 /., 
294. 

Relativity, principle of, 344. 
Resurrection. See Future Life, Immor- 
tality, Embodiment. 

Sacrifice, personal power of, 61, loi. 

Self-regard, 242. 

Sense-perceptions, nature of, 62 Jf.; re- 
lation to memory-images, 69, 77. 

Soul, capacities of, 284, note; conceptions 
of, 116, 130/.; idea of soul-substance, 
126, 130, 134; the psychical constant, 
116; transmigration of, 266. 

Space, awareness of relations of, 50; 
Bergson's view of, 58; spatial rela- 
tions absent during abstract think- 
ing, 94, 138. 

Substance, 126, 132, 138. StcSoul. 

Telepathy, 291. 

Theology, natural, 355; systems of in- 
complete, 356; out-of-door theology. 



INDEX 



363 



356; iinfinished teaching of Jesus, 
357- 

Thinking, energy of, 86 ff.; elemental 
continuity of, with nature, 86; po- 
tential and kinetic, 88; thinking is 
acting, 87; three phases of, 89. 

Time, Bergson on, 51; natural history 
of, consciousness of, 52; no absolute 
standard of, 53; sense of duration, 55; 
St. Augustine on, 56; variability of 
personal time rates, 54. 

Truth, love of, 328. 



Virgin birth, 210. 

Vision, binocular, 71 f.; death-bed vi- 
sions, 321. 
Vorticella, 26. 



Will, acquisition of, 107 /.; biological 
view of, 105; characteristics of its en- 
ergy, 109; energy of, 104 ff.; free- 
dom of. III f.; source of the idea of 
energy, 104; will to live, 285, 317. 
See Energy, 



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